Friday: The Colosseum

       Today has been one of the most adventurous and fast paced days of the week. From walking to the Pantheon, through hundreds of people to see the Colosseum, and running in the rain to eat lunch, I managed to create so many memories and understand that it's important to pack rain boots! It was the middle of the day before going to visits the activist groups and before lunch that the rain gods decided to crack the skies open. The rain started out as large droplets and then came the downpour. Three of the PLC girls and I found refuge and food in a café as we had to meet back with the group in an hour. Keep in mind, through this entire ordeal I was wearing a maxi skirt and open toed Clark sandals. It was inevitable that I was to get soaked even with an umbrellas. 

       When three o'clock rolled around, my wet feet screeched the floor as I walked into the day's activist presentation by Libera, an organization focused on spreading and education others about being anti-mafia and the strong influence that mafias have in the community. One way they spread information is by going to schools and neighborhoods to explain to the locals their rights as citizen ms and remind the students  of the opportunities available for work outside of the positions offered by the mafia. Another one of their big desires and projects are giving back to the community by acquiring the  litigated property of the mafia products from government and utilizing them in a way that benefits the people. Despite the slight language barrier through the presentation, the representative were very passionate about their cause and giving us reality check of how different mafias are depicted in the media. It was said that many of the problems with mafias originated in some U.S areas and come from the idea of corruption and payoffs among officials. This idea comes full circle to the points Dean Ray emphasized in class about how the Italian government is struggling to redevelop its political image and surpass the governmental deadlock with the amount of explicit corruption taking place

      Before visiting Libera, I was able to visit one of the topics of my childhood projects in school, the Colosseum. I walked up the steps of the Colosseum and was awestruck by the reality of standing where thousands of Romans and gladiators stood before me. The colosseum structure and architecture is amazing; however, the debauchery and heathen-like activities that took place were far from my version of entertainment and having fun. It was during Roman times that the Colosseum was used to house many fights that resulted in the slaughtering of an individual. The key here is that individual who died was almost, never a citizen. This goes to show the collective ethnocentrism of the Roman people that they have an intolerance for "straniero," or strangers. As a  PLC group, we visited the Pantheon where I was able to see the connection in the spirituality of the paintings and art of the time. The artist all had one mindset but different ways in expressing  the unified theme. The Pantheon was originally constructed under Agrippus, but after it was destroyed, it had been recommissioned under Hadrian. Furthermore, the arrangement and geometry of the building was magnificent. If you were to articulate the structure in layman terms it would be a circle within the square. This layout was a symbol of the relationship between the people and the gods.  The circle represents spirituality and the square represents the natural realm. 

       Each of the elements I was exposed to today ignited a desire for me to visit all of the other pieces of art and styles of architecture that I studied in middle school and high school. With that being said, my next stop is Athens, Greece as I thoroughly enjoyed Greek mythology. This trip is teaching me that you should take time in your life to explore the unknown and places that you have aspired to see , as you will regret not taking the chance later on in life.