Enjoy!
9-10 June
I’ve heard it said that jumping into a pool will teach a person more about how to swim in just a few seconds than years of reading about the mechanics of swimming ever will, and I think the same applies to most things in life. If you want to learn to play the guitar, you have to get a guitar and play it. If you want to learn a language, you have to speak it. And if you want to learn about people, humanity, the world, and how they all work, you have to visit the world with other human people, preferably good ones. Fortunately, that’s exactly what this last weekend in Rome was.
11 June
I’m not sure if it was a stroke of good fortune because we attended Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica earlier that day or if we just happened to meet all the right people by chance, but whatever it was, I was continually amazed at the generosity of the people we met in Rome.
We had already been to Trevi Fountain the day before, but we wanted to see it again at night. Even in the evening, it was crowded with tons and tons of tourists. You had to be proactive about pushing your way to the front if you wanted to throw your coin in, make a wish, and, of course, get a picture. My selfie stick had died, so we were struggling a little bit with the last part, but a nice Asian tourist saw us and offered to take our picture on her DSLR camera. We looked at each other, unsure what to say, but ultimately accepted, all the while laughing at how random a situation we had found ourselves in.
After the nice lady took our picture, her daughter asked one of us for an email address she could send it to once they were home. Anna gave her hers, and none of us were too sure we were ever gonna see the picture. But, sure enough, a few days later, it ended up in Anna's inbox, just as she had promised!
I still can’t get over it… For no reason other than to be a good person, this lady went out of her way to make sure a group of strange American tourists got a nice picture in front of the Trevi Fountain. What a saint!
By the time we finished up at the Trevi Fountain, it was getting pretty late, so we started making our way back to the Colosseum to catch the metro. On our way, we ended up passing a McDonald’s that sold gelato and a huge pride party happening in the streets just opposite the Colosseum. What a place.
Our good fortune that evening kept up when we realized that our metro tickets from earlier in the day still worked. Awesome! We caught the metro, got to the next station, and realized that we had missed our last train back to the hotel by twenty minutes or so. Not awesome! It seemed our good fortune was running out.
We left the station and tried to find a bus stop. The language barrier was a little bit of a challenge, but after pointing out where we needed to get to on a map, a bus driver pointed us in the direction of another bus that would take us pretty close. After one change, we found ourselves on the right bus (our metro tickets still working, by the way). The bus’s normal route wouldn’t have taken us exactly where we needed to go, but it took us close enough that our bus driver finished his shift for the night and offered to take us off-route to exactly where we needed to be for nothing in return. What a saint!
As soon as he dropped us off, we were amazed as we reflected on the events that had unfolded that evening. The lady taking our picture… Our metro tickets still working when they definitely shouldn't have… Finding a bus at 11 o’clock at night with a driver kind enough to go out of his way to make sure we made it home safely… People are good. I’m convinced.
We crashed pretty hard once we got back and slept well that night. Well, for the couple hours we did get to sleep before waking up at 4 to catch our 7 a.m. flight back to Barcelona. For the adventure we had that weekend, the lack of sleep was worth it. I’ve yet to find anything in this life that beats good times spent with the best of people.
16 June
I’m kind of at a loss of words now that it’s over… But I don’t think there’s anything better I could have done with the first month and a half of my summer this year. No amount of studying French in Utah could have given me the kickstart to learning a language like living with a host family in France could. No amount of reading about other cultures could have taught me about other people like living for a month in a foreign country could. And doing it all with this incredible group of people? All the better. Quelle belle vie.
