Well, unfortunately, I woke up Sunday morning with a bit of a cold. Originally my plans had been to leave around 9:00 to go to Hadrian’s Villa, but I couldn’t drag myself out of bed. Hoping to feel better, I slept in for another couple hours. Probably around 11:00 I woke up, feeling mildly better. But with a fair amount of homework waiting to be done, I had to cancel my plans for Hadrian’s Villa, which is about a half an hour outside Rome. Instead, I joined another group that was heading back to the Church of the Immaculate Conception, or, as I like to call it, the Bone church. More importantly, they were also going to another nearby church which had one of Bernini’s masterpiece sculptures – St. Theresa in Ecstasy. This was another one of my favorites from my art history days, so I was excited to get to see it.

The Bone church was much the same as two days before, but it was funny getting to watch people’s reactions to the macabre display of bones as art. It was a quick stop and then we walked up the hill to the other church. We spent more time here, most of it just gazing at Bernini’s amazing sculpture. The story it tells is of a woman who one night had a dream or communication straight from God that was so powerful that she described it as an ecstasy that no earthly power could provide. The scene depicted by Bernini shows Theresa writhing on the ground as an angel pierces her with a spear. The most impressive part is the way that her clothing appears to be flowing and moving as if made of cloth rather than marble. After probably a half an hour of just admiring this work we turned around to go back home and get some homework done.

The afternoon and night were almost fully dedicated to homework – split between ISE assignments, the writing revisions for our portfolio, and our writing final project. Additionally, people that had been travelling began to trickle back in and we spent time catching up on our weekends. By the end of the day I was quite tired, but my little cold was feeling much better and appeared to be just a 24 hour bug.