Almost done--one more night

It's midnight, we've had our Farewell Dinner at a local pizzeria (luckily for the restaurant--it thundered, lightninged, and pissed down rain so no one was dining), and I have had a long wet run along the Tiber, way down all the way past the island to the Piazza del Emporio, probably the longest run I've done in at least five years. But the ducklings are out and about. I snapped this picture of three of the least club-worthy members of the flock (the fellow on the left is 6'9", a puppy of the nicest sort, while The Shoes belong to an equally unlikely person of similar persuasion. Please please o please don't let anything happen to anyone on this last night--we have to be out of our rooms at 9 so the cleaning crew can come in and prepare for the next group, but at least we will still have the use of the lounges, a bathroom, and a classroom I can lock with luggage (my train isn't until the evening). Let's put it this way--I haven't tossed my student health forms or emergency procedures yet, not til everyone is signed out.

Earlier today they wrote their final exams [Jesus that sounds like gunfire, not firecrackers], and in a fit of diligence I spent part of the afternoon reading them, with some pleasure actually: either they are very adept at giving me what they think I want to hear, or they genuinely got something out of this experience, far more so than last year's bunch. Unfortunately this diligence cost me the chance to check out a potential study-center site for next year, though I did get down there in time to have the door slam in my face. Funny to just run out of week like this, but I suppose I shouldn't beat myself up. When I contemplated the farewell-dinner all I could think of was another opportunity for people to whine about something--though in the event, no one seemed unhappy (and some people were quite moved by my short little speech).

Yesterday by the way I very much enjoyed renewing contact with Italo, the maintenance man / coach / all-arounder from St Stephen's, a school in the Aventine where the Tour had lodged last year (but which had accepted a pre-freshman group from Brown this year, alas)--he and his rough-hewn hospitality and good humor had been a huge treat for me and for Alex and Amelie, and it was great to join up with Jay and have a couple of beers at the streetside bar on the Viale Aventino (a wee bit like having a beer right next to, say, a freeway onramp or something): as I had promised him, I was able to speak a few more words in Italiano, which he noticed and appreciated, and I enjoyed the illusion of understanding quite a bit of the conversation. Jay and I then rendezvoused with a subgroup of students whom we took on a little walking tour up the hill to a view point and then a cool little keyhole view of St Peter's dome through the gate of the garden of the Kinights of Malta.

After that it was a nice goodbye to the super-energetic lady who runs the gelateria on the Aventino near the school, who remembered Alex (she should, given his prodigious consumption of her wares last summer). It's really nice to patronize a place where they obviously care a lot for their wares, and for their service ethic. She's having a great success there, and I used the opportunity to shout several students a gelato as reward for winning the best-account-of-using-their-Paris-Museum-Pass the last weekend we were there. While some of the accounts were truly dippy, there were some genuinely thoughtful and enthusiastic trajectories described.

So. Check-out tomorrow, more marking, then night train. I hope to blog a bit more too, as I can't grade nonstop, even if I am not writing a ton of comments on these pieces. I'd like to describe a new exercise I had them do (self-evaluations plus evaluations of three others), as well as some things I observed about their interactions.

Vatican-can

Pretty amazing, the Mosh Pit that is the Museo Vaticano or I guess Musei Vaticani in midsummer (mustn't forget the Etruscan and the Egyptian museums). But hey--it's 10 degrees Centigrade cooler than it was last week, so I ain't complaining.

By going in a group we avoided the line that stretched around the block, but alas we had Alberto the Galloping and Incomprehensible Gourmet, whose sense of pacing was so spectacularly bad that Jay and I convinced him to finish up early, before he could blast through to the Basilica of St Peters, and turn us loose after returning the headsets through which he regaled us. This photo outside the other St Peters (in chains I think) illustrates both his gripping effect on the students, and his sense of timing: he spent a full 15 minutes yarning in front of this photograph of Moses, since he couldn't yak inside the church. Yikes.

But even the crowds and the guide couldn't ruin this place for me. I saw some stuff in the Raphaels and in the Sistine that I hadn't seen last year (partly because I was helping Amelie ride herd on that noted 10-year-old art connoisseur Alexander), and I actually did let Jay take the students to St Peter's basilica after lunch, so that I could go home, caffeinate, and blast through a buttload of bluebook in-class journal entries that I was chronically behind on. My goal is to turn those back Thursday (penultimate class) and thus lighten my suitcase considerably.



I know the segue for this must be "something up my sleeve," but no--I really don' know what the hell this photograph detail really means. It just struck me as interesting. That said, I am also planning a delightful exercise as well, before they do their evaluations of me / the program: I am going to have them self-assess their own participation and "citizenship" component, explaining just why they deserve a particular grade based on the quantity and quality of their contributions, and the number and seriousness of their screwups in the lateness / kvetching sweepstakes; the other task on that same piece of paper will be to articulate positive contributions by at least three other people, concretely and specifically articulating what they did and why it was important for the trip. That way I keep it from being a snark-fest, but maybe I can triangulate in on some interesting perspectives on the group dynamic. And I get to see how out of touch a couple of my ducklings truly are.

It was fun to hang out with Jay, pictured here in the Egyptian section, whom I don't spend much time with in Davis, but who is pretty good if crotchety company here. He and I had dinner in a nearby trattoria after I did another dynamite run along the river a bunch of bridges, with the lack of traffic making up for the hardness of the marble or cobble surface as I boomed along below the Lungoteveres on what I guess was sort of a towpath or quai, dodging bankside tent-bars in places and slaloming around defunct houseboatish obstructions in others. Then it was back to St Johns to read a few more papes, blearily, before checking e-mail and seeing how the do-your-other-job-by-remote-control thing was going. More on that anon. Or maybe not. But it IS weird to be so immersed in this experience that when requests come in for writing workshops, I have to think twice before recalling who else is on the workshop team with me....

Get in line in that processional

Yesterday was our bus tour of the city with a guide whose accent is impossible to place and perhaps too difficult even to caricature (think Martin Short as bizarro waiter, or Dana Carvey or Mike Meyers doing weird Continental accents, or something). As usual, I am still surprised at what people do for pictures--like this "kissing the Colosseum" classic perpetrated by some of my ducklings.

Today was great, with my long-awaited visit to the Museo Borghese, one of the great museums of the world, the one which I missed last year when one of my students had his breakdown and I spent most of the day making sure he didn't do himself real damage. We had a 9 AM slot (this small place only allows you in for two hours, reservations required) and my group did an amazing job of assembling in the lounge, all but two, in time to leave the lobby at 8:18 (the stragglers caught up before we had turned the corner to get to the Metro, but I think this scared some people, which is a good thing--even this late in the program).

What a place! No photos allowed, which actually is pretty cool, unlike the Vatican which we'll visit tomorrow with our bizarro guide (I will expect more grumbling from the Entitled Ones, including the Communications Major Who Thinks Very Highly Of His Ability To Communicate Even When He Has Nothing Other Than Navel-Gazing To Share), and this little museum has a higher density of amazing sculptures than anywhere else I can imagine, with the possible exception of the Accademia in Florence. I loved the textures on the backs of the grandfather Anchises, son Aeneas and grandson, showing the three ages of masculine musculature, from the wrinkly to the buff to the baby fat. Also memorable were the indentations on bed of the Paulina Bonaparte as Venus (and on Proserpina for that matter), the sadly human face of the dog in the painting of Circe the sorceress, and the dynamic action of the pissed-off David.

There was a special exhibit in the garden by some guy whose name I can't remember, Zledko Scheisskopf or something, that really made me think about how no one will be talking about him 500 years ago, but they'll still be treasuring Bernini and Caravaggio....

I am enduring some weird frustrations: with online train reservations (trying to secure my trip to visit Julius in the gite-house he's rented near Valence in the prime bicycling country in SE France, having pretty much decided that I will have to punt on the possibility of visiting my dad's aging cousins in Germany), as well as wih some shared-kitchen / dorm politics here at the St John's residence hall in Rome (evidently there is at least one kleptomaniac (food stealing) and several breathtaking slobs (e.g., cutting her boyfriend's hair in the bathroom right off the kitchen, and just leaving the mess), with different groups from different colleges blaming each other). This has reached Lord of the Flies levels,as people hoard silverware and bowls in their own rooms, leaving my student Jason to make do with a small shovel and washbasin-size bowl for his oh-so-nutritious cereal.

I think I have finally gotten my trip squared away--more changes than I would like, but that's what I get for traveling on the weekend between July and August.

The ARoma of the Finish Line

Got a bunch of little stuff to do before class today at 9:30 (including determining just where in this palazzo-complex class is going to be held), but thought I'd bloggify an e-mail I sent last night. Just checked downstairs and no one who knows anything will be here until after 9. Hmmm. My ducklings, who like to have themselves nealy in a line except when it's really necessary, will be upset that I haven't posted the week's schedule....

I am at the St John's University's Rome campus, a new venue for us since last year's school in the Aventine district of Rome was not available due to a conference. I'm composing in my room but sending this from downstairs in the computer lab, since the advertised wireless is not working and Andrea Who Knows All is not in until Domani. There were numerous little hitches when we got in a little bleary eyed, like, some of the photo-card keys were not working (which is serious, as the security level here is DefCon 3: you swipe in, the security guard swipes, you go upstairs, you swipe, you put your card in the holster next to the door, and that action activates the electrical systems in the entire room: A/C, outlets, lights, everything. Our host Stefano was able to set people up with some temporary cards, but it's pretty futuristic--and god help you if walk around the corner to the bathroom without your card and the door closes behind you....

As you might imagine the ducklings are somewhat daunted by a few things about this place, but I am also perversely glad for some of their travails even as I know that some of them will redound onto me. We had our half day in Lausanne after the bus ride from Cham (sleeping through the scenery), and evidently there was Grumbling because there wasn't enough to do (there was also a weather window yesterday morning in contrast to Friday, meaning that possibly people might have been able to go paragliding instead of traveling to Lausanne, having been rained out on Friday; the lucky ones who went Thursday have been preening more than I think is seemly, but I can't make these leopards change their spots).

I on the other hand had a very pleasant afternoon strolling the cobbles up to the cathedral, eating a very nice doner kebob and then walking down via the Elysee museum and then spending a nice couple of hours near the lake at the Olympic Museum (Lausanne is the headquarters of the IOC). Besides having street names honoring Grand Tourers, this is a great town, a great chance to experience a Swiss city with all its brutally expensive but perfectly planned execution (as everyone who was in attendance nodded in agreement at the orientation, I might add, and the grumblers are virtually all people who skipped it). Once we'd reclaimed baggage and boarded the breathtakingly on-time Swiss train for Milan I was aghast at the ways the students retreated into their electronic shells on the absolutely gorgeous train ride past Montreux and into the mountains as the dusk lit the peaks, very few of them looking at the scenery and only one or two noticing the full moon rise. Note the shade pulled to enable watching a dippy movie on an iPad or something.

Luckily I had some room around me most of the way to Milan, and from Milan after our train change I had a SINGLE couchette (that is, an entire compartment, one bed, all to myself) and didn't hear / see any more. Didn't sleep as well as I thought I would, but it wasn't for crowdedness' sake. Pondered more than I would like on the weirdness of this whole game, that you can bust your ass for however many months and then have to listen to little entitled twits kvetch about how they think their money is being spent (I got an earful from Tiffany as the kids rested in the bus before reclaiming their baggage from underneath, and buying more junk food to top off the 13-euro McDo-do that they indulged in their boredom earlier). While I know that is part of the OSC's job description, to keep an ear to the ground, I am not 100% enamored of the ways she delivers some of her lines....

Nonetheless, we all made it, and Jay Grossi, my On-Site Coordinator for Rome (and lecturer in Italian at UC Davis) was waiting with the metro passes at the unfamiliar train station (Tiburtina, not Termini), and on a Sunday morning it was just about as easy as possible to traverse the city and change at the main station (Termini) to get to St Johns.
Today was blessedly not as hot as it's going to get, and after the foomfit with Stephano (he insisted on leaving us all in the student lounge and taking every pair or trio of students up to their room room by room, showing them the swipe deal, verifying that half their cards didn't work, etc--not exactly a model of efficiency for people who'd been on a train all night (many of them watching video of all things)--this phase probably took 60 minutes instead of the 15 it would've been to say, "boys to the third floor, girls to the fourth, help each other and share the elvator and stairs, gather round and here's how the card swipe thing works or doesn't work," etc.. I gave them a little break until 11:15, when we had a very pleasant walking orientation with Jay, over from our location north of the Castel' Sant'Angelo to the Piazza del Populo (the traditional entrance of the Grand Tourers) and then the Spagna, then the Trevi Fountain and finally over to the Piazza Navona via the Pantheon.

Jay and I had a pleasant lunch in a tiny piazza and then discovered a church / cloisters he'd never seen before (always a possibility when you are just footing it through a city like this), Santa Maria della Pace, with its bit of Raphael visible through a glass window in a side room upstairs since the church itself is "chiuso" until some time that the entrance guard himself was not at liberty to divulge. I once again am pleasantly surprised by how walkable and nice this town is (in summer when there's not nearly as many people here I guess). Then I walked home, cranked out about 45 minutes cleaning up of the common kitchen on my floor (shared at the moment by 15 Florida students and the boys in my group, and unfortunately like most communal kitchens, rife with food and clutter in contempt of the impressive rule-sheets and notes from supervisors). Then I napped, then it was back to the nearby supermarket for coffee and cereal, and then I went out to run along the river in the dusk before getting blocked off; I ended up going to the Populo and then up into the Borghese park and after some false starts eventually all the way to the museum itself, where I admired the full moon and did some push ups. Felt great to stride easily and efficiently, with not much of an agenda, not really worrying about where I was, but just enjoying the not-horrible air and the not-horrible heat. Then it was back inside past three levels of swipe-a-card security to cook a simle dinner of mercy-kill penne pasta with garlic from the cupboard, and my own butter--at 11 PM.

Now I have to write up the game plan for the week and figure out what I am doing in class besides listening to people complain about the lack of wireless access. Truly the home stretch. And at least these gals have found the real treasure of Roma...