On day 9, we went to Etna!!! Definitely didn’t expect to see snow up in a volcano but I guess that’s what made it that much memorable. A friend pushed me in the snow and I think someone even accidentally threw a snowball at my professor. I ended up bringing back some rocks for some vulcanologist friends at Bowdoin.

After we went to Etna, we stopped by Aci Castello to eat lunch. Here’s a cute picture of me and my class! woo!

Then we arrived to Catania where we took a quick walking tour of the city. The buildings here looked so different from any other buildings we had seen before because they were made from volcanic rock. Etna was so visible from the city center and it felt like you couldn’t get away from the vulcano. An interesting fact about Sicily though is that in Sicilian dialect, the future tense does not exist because they weren’t sure if there would be a future with the constant threat of Etna looming over the island.

 

We finally got to Siracusa!!! This is probably my favorite city in Sicily. It’s right by the ocean, is not TOO touristy but is still lively and breathtakingly beautiful. Here’s a picture of four of us the day we arrived!!

We stopped by at a really amazing amphitheater that was all carved out of one large piece of stone/mountain. Apparently they still have performances there!

During our free time, three of my classmates and I walked along the water talking about how great the trip had been up until that point and how far we had gotten with our speaking ability. That walk was probably one of my favorite moments of the entire trip. The weather was perfect and the sunset was making the water look like a multicolored jewel.

My favorite part of the day was our short stop at Modica. We were only given an hour and a half and my class and I were determined to make the most of the time we had. The town was on a hill so we had to climb SO many flights of stairs to get to the top. We were pretty excited at how pretty it was so we ended up running up. Here’s Adam running ahead of the group.

We went to the center and found a lovely piadina place where we got lunch to go, bought some Modica chocolate (which is SOOOO good) and ran back down. On the way down, Adam found out that he got an internship at a Foundation in D.C. so we celebrated with hugs and love and continued our way back to the bus.

On Day 6, we went to Agrigento where we visited the home of Luigi Pirandello. Again, another fangirl day for me. His house was full of handwritten letters, manuscripts, and drawings by Pirandello and his family members. What was really memorable though was learning about the author’s death. Before the trip, Anna and I had to translate lines from Pirandello’s death wish and we read them aloud at Pirandello’s tomb. My part was:

“When I am dead, do not clothe me. Wrap me naked in a sheet. No flowers on the bed and no lighted candle. A pauper’s cart. Naked. And let no one accompany me, neither relatives nor friends. The cart, the horse, the coachmen, e that’s all. Burn me.”

What ended up happening though since Pirandello was such a celebrity, was that none of these wishes were actually met. There is so much more to the story that I would probably butcher if I tried to recount it, so I won’t.

But I did snag a sweet picture of his death wish (attached is the picture!).

After our long journey to Sicily, we met our amazing bus driver, Carmelo, and drove off to start our trip. We had some yummy arancini for lunch and had a walking tour of La Zisa, led by my favorite, Prof Gavioli, who showed us all the important spaces associated with Il Gatopardo. After that tour, I was pretty much a walking zombie…. but the tour could not end there!

That night, we went to see a puppet show. We walked into this small, dim space with rustic wooden benches. From what little I remember (again, I was a walking zombie), the puppets were so beautifully crafted and each had unique costumes. They were well animated to the point where they moved like real people. I just remember all the children sitting on the floor, laughing every other minute and just wondering what it would have been like if I had grown up learning about history through puppet shows.