Finding myself in front of the Colosseum …
I took one last step and then set my eyes upon theseemingly impossible – I was standing in front of the Colosseum in Rome, Italy.We had just finished the “final dinner” in the city for my fall 2011 Romeclass, and I had stepped out to take a walk. I wanted to end the semester thesame way that I started: standing in front of the Colosseum, awestruck. It wasthere that I first realized what I was about to experience. Rome, a somewhatbanal idea now, holds the history of the world at its fingertips. It was there thatI first truly understood where I was – I was in the middle of history,experiencing it first-hand as a 21 st century student. Though I hadlearned about Rome’s significance, I had never felt it. Here, however, I feltits influence. Countless pictures of the Colosseum flash in your mind when itsname is heard, but nothing – absolutely nothing – compares to the surge ofemotion you feel when standing before it, so insignificant. Yet at the sametime, you remember that it is you who built this; man built this pulsingstructure. Immediately you realize that nothing else matters. You are here, inRome. Rome is where time loses its place, and the Rome semester is when youfind yours.
I took one last step and then set my eyes upon theseemingly impossible – I was standing in front of the Colosseum in Rome, Italy.We had just finished the “final dinner” in the city for my fall 2011 Romeclass, and I had stepped out to take a walk. I wanted to end the semester thesame way that I started: standing in front of the Colosseum, awestruck. It wasthere that I first realized what I was about to experience. Rome, a somewhatbanal idea now, holds the history of the world at its fingertips. It was there thatI first truly understood where I was – I was in the middle of history,experiencing it first-hand as a 21 st century student. Though I hadlearned about Rome’s significance, I had never felt it. Here, however, I feltits influence. Countless pictures of the Colosseum flash in your mind when itsname is heard, but nothing – absolutely nothing – compares to the surge ofemotion you feel when standing before it, so insignificant. Yet at the sametime, you remember that it is you who built this; man built this pulsingstructure. Immediately you realize that nothing else matters. You are here, inRome. Rome is where time loses its place, and the Rome semester is when youfind yours.
