The End.

We awoke this morning to our last site visit, our last art history class, and our last dinner together. Things are winding down. Assignments are being submitted and airport transportation is being organized. Feelings on this matter are diverse. A pensive Mindy commented, "Rome is great, but a bowl of white rice... If only they could be found together". On the other hand Kelsea stated that, “It is really sad leaving a city with so much living history". Regardless of your opinion of departing though, everyone will be disappointed to bid farewell to the companions to which we have become close to over the last few weeks.

The day began with a suspenseful presentation by Scott in which he demonstrated the errors from a section of Dan Brown's novel "Angels and Demons". This section takes place in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo. It revolves around the protagonist's discovery of a murdered body under a chapel in the church. On our walk to the Church, Scott pointed out inaccuracies in the book. For example, a scene that takes place in the Pantheon at 8:00pm, could never have possibly happened since the building closes at 7:30.



Figure 1: The Chigi chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo.

In the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo Scott showed us that the chapel that Brown describes as spacious and out of the way, is actually quite small with lavish marble and many decorations. He also pointed out that Dan Brown distorted some of the most important works of art in the chapel. After five weeks of art history presentations, everyone appreciated Scott's enthusiasm and use of humor.

Later in the day, we all met again so that each house could present their heraldic crests. These images were supposed to imitate the coat of arms of the famous Roman families that we studied. They used simple symbols to represent different aspects of the four apartments held by the Honors Program students. Below are photographs of some of the apartments and their crests. One apartment, which is located in the Campo di Fiori, was so large that it was split into two different families. The symbols and themes that the different apartments focused on ranged from nutella for one of the Campo di Fiori families, to navigation for the men’s apartment which was located the farthest away and through a maze of roads.



Figure 2: The men's apartment with coat of arms.



Figure 3: One of the Campo di Fiori family's coat of arms.



Figure 4: The Rome Center apartment with coat of arms.

After a break with much studying for the coming Italian final, the honors students watched presentations by another group from the UW, the design students. In these presentations we got a chance to look at the culmination of five weeks of photography and studio work. The books of photos were written to poems that the students chose. Several of these poems were actually written by Erin Malone, the instructor of our travel writing course.

We ended the night with the “Last Supper” at the restaurant Pierluigi’s. Here the students presented Shawn, Lisa, and Erin gifts in gratitude for all the work they put into making this trip a success.

The End.