February 1st

Today was a jam packed day! We started the day off at our service learning sites, mine being the refugee center. We helped make and pass out tea and cornettis (croissants) and taught an English class. Most of the time the English class has a multitude of students in it, but this time there was only one Afghani man. It was quite a nice change of pace. Because there was only one man, who knew about only 5 words in English, we got to tailor our class to his needs. After English class we headed back to the Rome Center for the 'passing of the baton' class because Julie arrived today!

Our passing of the baton class consisted of a brief overview of how the past 4 weeks here in Rome have been. We needed to catch Julie up on all of our experiences and how we, as a group, have been doing in Rome and how our perspectives have changed since living in Italy. It was really interesting to hear the differences between everyone's perspective now and our individual perspectives after experiencing life in Italy for 4 weeks. After our overview we talked briefly about our trip the Naples! We are all soooo excited!

Later that evening we listened to a very interesting and thought provoking lecture by Manka and Stephanie. They talked about the connections between Italian identity, race and education. After their lecture we had a pot luck. Jenny and I prepared baked veggies while our other class mates prepared pasta, mexican dishes, bruschetta, and eggplant. Manka made her infamous Indian dishes. It was quite the feast. One thing I definitely learned today was about the boys in our program...boy can they cook!