IRIS

Sarah Derbew ‘09 sends in another installment of her Study Abroad Journal:

In the middle of March, we had a week-long field trip to Sicily. It began early Friday morning with a 7 o’clock roll call on our field trip bus (a huge beautiful charter bus). We drove from Rome down to southern Italy, then crossed the boot and visited various parts of Sicily. Finally, we took a ferry from Palermo to Naples and drove back up to Rome.

One of my favorite cities was Taormina, in northeast Sicily, where we saw ancient Greek temples.

The city was very laid-back and also had a beautiful theater that was converted from a Greek to a Roman theater. It was the second largest theater in Sicily and supposedly had perfect acoustics. Even though a few friends and I got lost in this city, I didn’t mind wandering a little bit trying to find the group and enjoying the atmosphere of the city.

We also went to Agrigentum and Selinus, then north to Palermo. I really enjoyed Palermo as well. It had a cosmopolitan feel that reminded me of NY and it was really nice to walk around that city and see the opera hall and a GREAT pastry shop that sold the best cannolo I have ever had.

We visited ancient sites throughout Sicily during this trip, mostly ancient cities colonized by Greeks and eventually abandoned. The architecture and organization of these monuments was amazing. Every evening, we stayed in different hotels with four or five course dinners.
Our director chose our menus, making sure to include local meals; Sicilian cannoli are far superior to any other dessert I’ve ever tasted.

The trip was very structured though with early morning starts and late dinners so I am glad to be back in Rome and have a bit of a more relaxed pace. We have another week long field trip in a few weeks to southern Italy so I have time to wind down until then.