Joanna Mason
Florence Columnist
Beautiful mosaics, delicious regional specialties (especially an abundance of seafood dishes), and warm beaches are only a few examples of the expectations that accompanied us on our early morning flight from Florence to Palermo in Sicily. We left Tuesday, Oct. 19 for our fall educational fieldtrip to Sicily and Southern Italy. In Sicily we visited cities such as Palermo and Monreale, and listened to anecdotes from our guides that included observing the mixture of Arabian, Byzantine and Norman artistic styles in cathedrals. After a long day of exploring churches, riding on our tour bus and meeting local Italians in restaurants or stores, it was nice to return for dinner at our hotel and spend the rest of the night either swimming in the hotel pool or sharing the clementines that hung on trees in front of our bungalow doors in Taormina.
Friday morning we left our hotel in Taormina for the last time and drove up the winding path to Mount Etna, Europe’s highest
active volcano at 3,350 meters. After our initial bus ride from the hotel, we split into groups of six to climb the mountain in the gondolas. Just from the views from the gondola of sulfuric ash and crumbling lava, I could tell we were about to experience something incredible. How often does one have the opportunity to climb on an erupting volcano? When we arrived at the top, we boarded another motor vehicle that continued to take us closer to the peak of Mount Etna.
For many of us, visiting Mount Etna was one of the most remarkable things we have ever done. One of our Mount Etna guides spontaneously offered us a special tour off the marked path to see flowing magma up close. Elizabeth Whatley, the director of the Florence Program, took into consideration our departure that evening for Naples and our enthusiasm to see real lava and decided to divert from the itinerary for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Jumping, tripping and rolling down, somehow we all managed to conquer traversing the grey sand-like substance that stretches over miles and miles of Mount Etna.
Climbing along the sides of the volcano was a challenge for everyone. When we returned to our bus, despite the ash covering our faces, hands and the lava inside our pants and shoes, each one of us was beaming with the memory of the flowing steaming orange substance we stood over, the lava we saw, and the terrific day we spent together.
It is hard to imagine that we have six weeks left in this semester, but when I consider all of the things I have seen, the places I have visited and the friends I have made, I find it even more difficult to understand how all of this could happen in such a short time. How is this possible? I truly think that it is God’s way of revealing himself to me, a little bit more each day because there is no other way to explain the majesty of the volcano, the compassion and caring attitude of students in this house and the joy that fills our sometimes-overwhelmed-with-homework villa on Viale Milton in Florence, Italy. I am learning that God is here in Italy in all of the big and the small ways.
11-4-2004
