Week 3 - Assisi

February 04, 2024

Week 3 - Assisi

Ciao Friends and Family,

I can comfortably say that I am now adjusted to my new schedule and way of life. There were a few new steps and routines were different at first but now are normal parts of my week. One of those transactions was having to cook for myself. Let me just preface that I have been taught and know how to cook for myself thanks to my parents. However, I have been very fortunate living in FarmHouse for the past few years and having a private chef who cooks my weekly meals. I think one of the biggest perks of my apartment location is that it’s located above the grocery store. My roommates and I have been taking turns making dinner each night and it is so helpful to stop at the store after class and then head up to our apartment. We have made quite a few pasta dishes but this week we decided we were all craving burgers. I have also really enjoyed the focaccia I've tried here so I decided to make my own at home. For this only being my first time, I was very impressed with the results.

Another transition in our life has been taking out the recycling every night. In Italy, they separate the trash into 5 categories and everyone has tubs for each category. There is plastic/metal, paper, glass, compost, and assorted trash. Each night you put your bin outside your door (whatever category is being picked up that day) and the recycling service comes to collect in the morning. We were getting to be a bit desperate for space with our plastic because we forgot to take it out the first two weeks. Additionally, the amount of plastics that can be recycled here is far more than in the US. Even plastics like bread bags and candy wrappers. The whole system feels much less wasteful than the system we have. A small but interesting difference from the US.

This Friday our class took a trip to Assisi where we were able to see The Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi and the Basilica of Saint Chiara. The town of Assisi was much smaller in comparison to both Orvieto and Rome of course but so enjoyable. Walking through the town seemed like something out of a movie with all of the narrow steep cobblestone streets. It was amazing to see the building of the town built on such a varying elevation, at times it felt like we would never find level ground. At the top of the town sits a medieval castle with one of the best views I've seen on this trip so far. I unfortunately didn't have time to explore this castle but the views from the outside were still worth the trek up. Getting to see both of these basilicas was quite impressive but left me asking a lot of questions to some of my friends who grew up Catholic. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take pictures inside but I will leave a link here if you're interested.

https://www.sanfrancescoassisi.org/html/ita/index.php

One thing I found super interesting is that this is preparing for a ton of people to visit in the next two years (approximately 160 million). This is because the Holy Year is in 2025 and the 800th anniversary of Saint Francis is in 2026. Thankful we were able to see Assisi in a low tourist season and it was primarily locals.

The Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

Basilica of Saint Chiara

Aenya, Joe and Maddie walking the street of Assisi

Here you can see how steep one of the roads was

Temple of Minerva (ancient roman temple turned into a church)

I found it so interesting that they built new building up right next to this ancient temple.

When we finally reached the top of the hill the bells of the churchs started ringing. So surreal!

On Sunday, Aenya and I decided to head back to Rome on our own and had a great time enjoying the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Villa Borghese, and probably the nicest McDonald I've been to. It was nice to visit a part of Rome with far fewer tourists. Although it took a bit more planning to organize routes with trains, busses, and the metro this day trip didn't feel much different from a day trip to Kansas City or Wichita from Cottonwood Falls. Hope you all enjoy!