24th of January

Today, January 24, 2011 I am under the impression that mostly everyone suffered from a long restless night. All of us being college students, at some point in our lives, can understand that not having a good night’s rest requires extra effort to get through the morning. Every moment seems to take extra-long while we are under this state. Nevertheless, we all managed to all be present and ready for class at nine in the morning.

I particularly enjoyed today’s class. When it comes to social justice issues; especially when discussing immigration and education, I am very passionate and motivated to engage in constructive dialogues. Lucky me, we were discussing immigration and education in Italy, so I felt at my element. My interest was grasped and maintained by the topics. Further, we got to know one another at a more personal level. It takes a certain comfort, courage and willingness to be vulnerable by sharing one’s perspective to a stranger that we just met three weeks ago. Nevertheless, from my point of view, I am sure that we were all true to ourselves and to our classmates. I find this kind of exercise useful and create room for contrastive dialogues; which creates space for improvement and a learning environment. What I took from this exercise is: you don’t necessarily have to agree to understand and respect one another’s opinion.

After an emotional class, I joined Britney and Marissa. We were determined to get admission tickets; our ‘plan of attack’ was to go to the information desk at the Vatican. After touring the area and asking for direction we finally knew where to acquire the tickets. However, we were confronted by the guards. Who don’t show facial expression – not even a smile. We good our tickets from the non-smiling guards and decided to go tour inside. It was definitely an unexpected surprise.

After a couple of hours running around; and after watching the movie based on the book Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio I finally went back home. The first thing I did was to get into the shower. The guys cooked dinner and it was YUM YUM YUM good. What a day.

Ciao,