I don’t know where my time in Rome is going! We have less than a week left here and there’s still so much to see! On Sunday a few of us tried to go to mass at the Vatican, but since it was Pentecost you had to have tickets. It was way too hot to stand in the square in our (very modest) church clothes so we took the Metro over to San Giovanni in Laterano and attended a service there. It is one of the four major churches of Rome, the other three being Santa Maria Maggiore, St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Outside the Walls (there’s one inside the walls, too; I checked.) There’s really no way for me to describe the church, so I will just focus on one thing. Around the edges of the main nave there are huge statues of the twelve apostles. They are so lifelike, and their faces just look so realistic. My favorite part is that they’re all stepping out of their niches, which it supposed to represent Jerusalem coming to Rome. I want to go back to that church every day, but then I would never see any of the other churches.
This week we’ve also visited Pompeii and some of the Roman catacombs. It’s funny that these things, that are so amazing in their own right, aren’t even the highlight of my week.
Today, my failed attempt at seeing St. Peter’s was remedied by a six hour trip to the Vatican. Everything about today was beyond words. The art, the history, the power, the sheer number of people that worked on this tiny country really overwhelmed me. I will try to describe the experience in greater detail when I have more time, but for now I just want to say that it makes me upset that some people will die without seeing what I saw today.
Tomorrow morning I am off for a day trip to Sicily! Unfortunately, my plane leaves in eight and a half hours so it’s time for bed now! Ciao!
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