off the island

And by island, I mean Sicilia (that would be how the Italians say Sicily). We went there on a 10 day field trip, which was like a real spring break, since the other spring break I had was a lot of going, not too many breaks, and not a whole lot of spring! Sicily was amazing- they had great sunny weather; it was t-shirt worthy pretty much all day for us, but of course the italians were still wearing winter coats (seriously, we saw fur jackets when it was probably 65 degrees F outside!) The only downside of the trip was one of our classmates ended up in the hospital- Eric. He was one of the kids in my studio section last year and the one who got us all into ultimate frisbee, which he's pretty hard core about and really good at because he's ridiculously athletic. Actually a little too athletic, because in Naples he decided to go "street walking" and do stunts on the streets, and thought it would be cool to do a backflip off a traffic barrier, although he had never done one before... he ended up smashing the back of his head into the cobblestones, and they had to have an ambulance take him away. He went to the hospital in Naples and they induced a coma for a couple of days, but he was doing well so they pulled him out of it and he left the ICU, although he has to stay in the hospital for another 5 weeks! He managed to send us text messages a couple of days ago that said he was doing well and getting better, which I thought was a really good sign.
Not that a whole lot of good can come out of something like that, but we were all rather pleased that the director of the Rome program stayed with Eric and not us... he's one of those people whose every quirk gets on your nerves- and he has a lot of quirks! So we were really happy he wasn't with us for the rest of the trip and it was so much more relaxed and vacationish- we didn't have wake up calls and and some free time we could go on beaches and stuff, which was amazing!!! Cefalu was my favorite city- it had a huge mountain in the middle of the city and then the city was along the beach below. We got to climb the mountain and get an amazing view from the top and then we bought some fabulous fruit and pistachios and ate them on the beach. Palermo was another pretty sweet city, also on the coast, also beaches and palm trees, you get the picture! My least favorite was Catania, which was the last city we visited and also the largest in Sicily. We visited on a Sunday, so a lot of things were closed, and it was just kinda dingy and industrial, especially compared to some of the other towns I've described.
Anyway, I'm back now, onto a new project, which is really a new phase of the same project, and enjoying a new brown-red tinge to my skin... bring on the sun, summer!