Last but not least... Rome!!

Now there are a lot of tourist things that I accomplished in the last couple of days in Rome, but I also found myself realizing that this is the last place I will be to observe and take in the culture of this city. As we went on our first tour around the city to see all of the wonderful historical monuments that Rome is famous for we learned the story of the She Wolf and the boys that were raised by her to later become the founders of Rome. The She Wolf and the two boys are the symbol of Rome and all that they stand for in strength and determination.

Throughout this whole journey I have learned many things, but what has stuck with me the most is the understanding that culture and tradition have led to the mindset and respect that you see around Italy today. I am merely a bystander glancing into their lives and I will never be able to fully understand the determination they have to keep their culture alive within their children and families, but I know that I love just watching from the outside.

Rome was a clear example of taking history and restoring it to teach the past, we do this with children as well. We restore old knowledge to polish the new knowledge that we are trying to teach. If you enrich the students lives with things that directly relate to themselves and their culture, I believe that they would want to understand and know more about what you are teaching them.

We need to spend more time enriching students in determination because of reasons other than their testing. It is time to step back and look at things from another level, to take a look from a level of culture and understanding.

Siena

We now have reach the part of our trip where it is all about being able to observe the children and the culture of the city. We had a lot of time to relax and enjoy our surroundings, which is exactly what I took time to do. In our two days here I spent one night sitting in the main square just watching as the children played and enjoyed their time as their parents sat on the side line talking about their day. Sounds pretty normal right?

It is hard to imagines life without these small moments of time were laughter and childhood is all that matters. You are free to laugh and play as you grow. To me I have seen this situation many times in my life, but I always forget to take the time to actually observe it with open eyes. 

I know that I am here to take the time to observe the key aspects of this culture to be able to relate it back to my findings working with the children. But I also understand that I am here just taking a glance into their culture, and that everything I am learning is just the tip of the ice berg. 

Dinner with Contrada Della Selva. The cool thing about being in Siena is learning about the contradas. Separate little villages within one whole community that would compete against one another in the twice a year horse races. These little villages had their own churches and functions that they did on their own. It was the family that you were born into, and you had that community to support and help you when you needed it. Your contrada was your way of life in what you grew up learning and what you respected. 

Now of course thinking about having something like that back around the states, you can only think of the high hate rate you would have about contrada to contrada, but that is not the case here. You respect the other contradas for they are also in your community just a different part. Now that doesn't mean the competition rate was not high come race time, but other than that it was still community. 

Again this is where I started to realize how big respect of community and family fall into place within these cities and towns that I have been in observing. 

Observation time in Florence

Once again guys I must apologize for Internet that will not let me post my blogs! I have been documenting my notes on word and will transfer them into a blog as soon as it allows me to do so. It's a technology world and I'm just trying to get it to work with me!😝

Culture is most commonly misunderstood to be the same in all aspects for certain parts of the world, but I do not believe that is the case. One thing I have noticed moving around from city to city in the past couple of weeks, is that the cultures are very similar but each town has their own way of doing things. They are different in a way that makes them the same. The same goes for the United States. How many times have you heard, 'that's an American thing'. I hope you are as tired as hearing that as I am. I try not to generalize about Italy as much as people generalize about America, but it happens to everyone. In saying that as we are extremely different on some cultural things from state to state, or even from city to city that are a couple of miles apart. 

Locations have a lot to do with how culture is affected. In Aosta it was a widespread farming culture, which lead to fresh foods being a huge deal and agricultural focused schooling. When we relocated to Venice  we were able to see a whole new cuisine of adding more seafood and the culture of everything having to be imported in just to have daily things, a city on water is nothing like a city of farming! So why do we generalize the cultural aspects of things like this. Florence was a good mix of Aosta and Venice to me, but the main focus of the town was not agriculture or imports and fishing, it was art. A whole city dedicated to walking and breathing the art that influenced a country and the world for the most part. 

Sometimes I catch myself forgetting to take a step closer and look at the surroundings that I am around at the moment rather than generalizing on past experiences of the whole. I think we all catch ourselves doing that at some point! At this point of my trip I am finished with the observations in the classroom and have moved on to the next two portions of the class which is the focus of culture and cuisine. To be open to observe something so new to me, I have to pay attention to the smaller things in life. 

Without trying to generalize the whole in saying this, the smaller things in life here are some times the most important way to view things. All of the places I have been while traveling Italy have remained to focus on a slow pace style of life rather than rushing through things. From everything to taking your time while eating and having time to talk between courses, to enjoying nightly walks while eating gelato. I honestly don't know how I will be able to go back to a life style with no siesta in the middle of the day. I mean gave you ever heard of shutting down most of the town for a couple of hours from 2-4 just to go home and take a nap and then coming back? It sounds crazy but let me tell you it has been the best thing in the world. 

So enough of all of that, I just had it on my mind the past couple of days since I wasn't able to upload my daily post! My knowledge of opening up to the ideas of a different life style has grown beyond what I could ever imagine on this trip.. And I am still learning, but on to the fun things!!

In Florence I was able to meet David, because you have to meet David when you come to Florence... If you don't well that's just not okay. 

 

We were beyond excited to be able to take a few selfies with this amazing piece of art!

We also killed ourselves and our legs by climbing to the top of the Duomo, which was a total of 468 steps just to get up to the top! Then Greg and I went up the bell tower of the cathedral which was another 414 in one day... Go ahead you can call us crazy! I can assure you I have paid for it 😌  

This was the view from the top of the duomo! The bell tower which you see behind me is what we decided to climb next, I have learned that explorations is truly just the wake of bad planning!! 

We were able to watch many glorious sunsets from different locations such as the top of our private roof top! 

Pitti gardens, first off no husband would ever love me enough to allow me to build a home and garden this large just because I didn't like the castle I was given to live in the first time around! This was completely overwhelming with beauty, and just comes to show the amount of power and wealth were I'm some these families back in the day...

A really cool thing that we also got to witness totally by accident, was being in Florence for their Independence Day. They had a small ceremony where one representative from each branch of their military attended to take the time to thank each and every branch. 

 

Just like in the USA, we are beyond thankful for those that serve for this country and we take time to thank them!

Thankful for these fun experience that are guiding my way in exploration to better understand the cultural aspects of this city 😊