Back from Rome

This is a long post, so let me say a hearty welcome to three new patrons who joined us over this past week: Jeni Buechel, Ashley Wittling, and Hannah Miller! 

So, I'm back, and I'm alive. That's about all I feel confident to say right about now. 

Think about going on a school trip with a thousand people, in twenty buses, and staying in two hundred ramshackle bungalows, in a camp where breakfast is a fifteen minutes' march, and the reception a whopping  twenty. Imagine all that might happen. Now multiply that by ten, and you have my past week. No kidding. 

I'd planned to do a little sketch every night, but had to abandon that after three days.  I was on duty 24/7, and slept an average of 4 hours every night. 

The worst was today when we got back, exhausted, cold to the bone, and I waited for every one of my kids to be picked up. One mother, who's been my friend for years, came to ask how it went (and embraced me when she saw my face). One came to complain (my face apparently didn't scare her off). All the other twenty-four just took their kids and went home without even looking at me, even once. You're my witnesses - this is the last time I have risked my health and sanity for kids and their parents who haven't got the ghost of a clue what I'm doing for them.

The first image above was painted after arriving at our camp, on the first day, when I was already knackered but still able to see rain as something romantic. You know those typical little Tuscany paintings, with the red-tiled houses among the pines and cypresses? They're always orange; it was a hazy blue and green when we drove past. I kind of liked that. 

Day two. Sunday. Day trip to Pompeii. I'd been so incredibly excited for that one. We took the bus at 7 a. m. and drove south in a torrential rain, and it was becoming clearer and clearer that the audiobook I was listening to - "Pompeii" by Robert Harris, with 35 degrees and a week-long drought -  had nothing to do with the Campania we were driving through. Still, we stopped halfway up Vesuvius and started the ascent. There was a storm blowing sheets of rain horizontally into us, and within two minutes, each and every one of us - three hundred students and about thirty teachers - were drenched to the skin. You couldn't see further than about ten feet. No view from the top, so we just hastened down (almost losing some because we simply couldn't see them) and dashed back into the buses, shivering with cold. We then decided we couldn't do the trip to Pompeii. It would have been the height of irresponsibility to take all those dripping wet kids on a day trip. So we drove back to the camp and spent the afternoon drying out our shoes and coats with hair dryers. I painted the piece above - cheating; we never saw Vesuvius except when we stood on it.

Day three - Sightseeing in Rome. Once again, it was raining almost without pause. I managed to snap a few photos of those wonderful Bernini angels at Castel Sant'Angelo, which I later painted.

The rest of the city tour was cut short again. We were once more wet to the skin after the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and Piazza Navona, and for the second time, the afternoon tour (to Saint Paul Outside the Walls) was cancelled. 

The third day, I was woken at four thirty by the friends of my daughter, who was also on the trip - she'd been sick all over her bed (joining eight other kids of her class who were also sick) and I had to come clean it up, and take her to the hospital tent. That way, she missed one of the few truly wonderful moments that week - a holy mass celebrated by the Patres of our school right in the Basilica of Saint Peter, with her Geography teacher playing the organ. 

As we went outside, the rain caught up with us again though, and by the time we were back in our bus for the afternoon tour to the ruined harbour of Ostia Antica (which I'd never seen and, needless to say, had really looked forward to) was cancelled as well. 

That day, the quarrelling among the students started; a thunderstorm raged right through our camp and lightning actually struck next to it; our bus was broken open and robbed, with several pieces of luggage missing, and several kids succumbed to cabin fever, resulting in broken noses and smashed fingers, and that was when art became somewhat secondary...

I have to say that my class behaved pretty fine, especially under the circumstances; but all in all, that week was just incredible. I mean, I've been on school trips before, and thought I was prepared, but this was nothing I could ever have been prepared for. 

My eye is worse than ever, which has led to a few panicky moments (try crossing a street in Rome with mopeds zooming around you, or walking up Vesuvius in a storm, and trying to see if all your students are still with you, and you just can't be sure until you've looked and squinted three times...)

Now it's the Easter holidays. So badly needed, so well deserved.