Italy!

After what seemed like a very long travel day, we have arrived in Italy and are all settled in at our hotel in Sorrento. I am still searching for an adequate location to place my suitcase, as the teachers have been allocated rooms whose dimensions are approximately equal to those of our beds. The students seem to find this quite amusing, as many of them appear to be living the "suite life" in their relatively sizable rooms.

It took us a little while to meet up with our bus driver at the airport in Rome yesterday (I'm not so sure that he was looking for us as hard as I was looking for him. In fact, I'm convinced he was actually hiding). The drive to Sorrento from Rome was also a bit lengthy because of massive traffic jams. I think we saw the entire Italian population on the road yesterday. Sorrento is a major tourist destination for people from all over.

Today we woke up bright and early and went to visit the ruins at Pompei. Unfortunately, along the way, we were also able to photograph the ruins of our bus as it broke down a few minutes outside of sorrento. Our driver dealt with it in typical Italian fashion:

1. There was some yelling (I'm not sure who or what he was yelling at. It wasn't us though.
2. There was a lot of hand gestures, particularly the one with both arms extended at the sides with palms facing up in disbelief.
3. He smoked a cigarette.
4. He told us that the bus was broken and that another one was coming. Fortunately, it was only about 15 minutes before we were on our way again.

Once at Pompei, it was really cool to see the remains of this city that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The plaster casts of people frozen in time was pretty eerie. After Pompei, we went for lunch at a traditional pizzeria in the birthplace of pizza, Naples. Fortunately Naples has pizza to claim as their own, because if it weren't for this delicious food, they would be known for pollution, litter, graffiti, and people who yell for no reason. Pizza wins this one. It was delicious, by the way.

After lunch, we visited the archeological museum in Naples. It's full of artifacts from Pompei, although some students seemed more intrigued by the two photos Mr.Lawlor took of me at the pizzeria, one with a full plate of pizza, and one with an empty plate. When the back and forth buttons on my camera are pressed rapidly between these two similar photos, it appears as though the pizza is disappearing and reappearing. Take my word for it, it was fascinating.

We finished the day by hiking up Mount Vesuvius...It took some convincing for some of our students after seeing the damage that it had caused in the past, but they were all very excited to make it to the top. The view from the peak was amazing, and it was really exciting to look into the crater of an active volcano and actually see some steam coming up through the rocks.

We have a full day of class scheduled for tomorrow, followed by a full day visiting the island of Capri on Tuesday. I think I know which one the students are looking most forward to...