September 27, 2023
Day Fifteen
September 15, 2023
Shawn & Julianna
Julianna
I can’t believe how fast the time has flown! It feels like the program just began and we are already heading home.
Today the students checked out of the dorms, caught rides to the airport and said goodbye to the Eternal City. As I reflect on the past two weeks (with a stomach full of pasta and legs tired from all the walking), I am amazed by how much we have seen and learned in such a short time. We have wandered the ancient streets of Rome and seen elaborate fountains, old monuments, even older monuments, and countless churches. We’ve explored the millennia of Roman history through museums and the stories told by students in front of each place we visited. We’ve documented our thoughts, ideas and unanswerable questions in our journals. We’ve quenched our thirst from many of the unique water fountains around the city. We’ve eaten bottomless pasta, pizza, suppli and cornetti, and gotten accustomed to the delicious Italian caffès (espresso) and cappuccinos. We’ve lived like Romans for two weeks and now, as we knew would happen, we must soon return to our normal lives.
We went around our table last night at the final group dinner and asked students what their favorite part of Rome had been. Answers varied, but one kept coming up as a top choice: the Borghese Museum. I think this speaks to the curiosity and intellect of this wonderful group of students and I’m grateful that I was able to be a part of their first UW class.
With the start of autumn quarter looming, I’m sure the students’ thoughts will soon be occupied with new friends and roommates, classwork and all of the exciting adventures to be had in Seattle as they start a fresh chapter of their lives. I’m excited to see how they grow and change throughout the rest of their time at UW!
Ciao!
Shawn
This was my 17th visit to Rome and every time I’m here, I learn something new about this ancient city and about myself. I look at it as not so much a class in the traditional sense, but a shared experience with my students. We traveled together, ate together, lived together, and learned together. I am most of all still a student like all of my students. My wife, Erin, and I traveled to Tuebingen, Germany and to Amsterdam, Netherlands for a week following our class. I continued to visit museums. At the Museum of the University of Tuebingen, I saw 40,000 year old artifacts from the ice age and in Amsterdam I visited the Anne Frank House and walked through the very rooms where she and her family hid from the Nazis, saw Van Gogh and Vermeer paintings at the Rijksmuseum, and gazed at contemporary art in the Stedelijk Museum. I met a watchmaker in Tuebingen whose family has been in the watch making business since 1546! In each place the art and artifacts tell a valuable story. I remember thinking that I needed to share these stories with my Rome students when I see them back in Seattle. Study abroad classes are, in many ways, the perfect learning environment which is as diverse as something as large as the Colosseum or a local person is teaching you the Italian word for the food that sits on the plate in front of you. Aside from all things we learned, a class like this is really about relationships and what we shared will stay with us for all four years of my students’ time at the UW and even beyond. Students I’ve had on study abroad class from years ago still stay in contact with me, telling me where they’ve traveled to and the travel stories they brought back. I want to thank each and every one of my Rome students for the wonderful way they committed to our class and for their unfailing engagement in all things Rome. I look forward to the stories they will continue to share with me for years to come.