October 2
The school kicked off our class trip to Greece with our very own Olympics. Dressed as gods with wreaths on their heads, the professors looked down as we ran in races, came up with group chants and songs, and made human sculptures with shaving cream. Apparently 2008 is "too soon" to make jokes about the Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD.
October 3
By late afternoon, buses had brought us to Bari, on the eastern coast of Italy. St. Nicholas is buried there in a grand basilica. At twilight we headed onto the ferry Piraeus that would take us to Greece. My friends and I had a blast wandering the corridors, getting lost, and sitting in the darkness of the stern deck, watching the waves churning and leaping in our wake. We danced late into the night at the ship's disco, ordering kamikazes and arguing about who came from the best state. Plenty of smokers lounged in the bar, which probably contributed to me having a bad cold for the rest of the trip (As I said when I started this half a year, sickness is definitely a theme of my Rome Semester).
