field trip – Scholar Forge

Once upon a time, we took our Classical Conversations Challenge B class to Rome and it was life-changing.

As we were sitting in church tonight for our Good Friday service, something in the sermon reminded me of the Rome Catacombs (not to be confused with the Paris Catacombs…cough cough). So I’m reposting my blog/journal entry from that epic homeschooling field trip here. (maybe mostly to remind myself that I need to take the next batch of students to Rome).

May 9, 2019

Today was the last full day in Rome and each day I’ve thought was the best… so of course today was no different. At one point I was flying down the infamous Appian Way in a taxi listening to 70’s music, discussing the resurrection message we’d just heard deep under the earth in the catacombs, and I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

Jamie and I started out the day with cappuccinos and chocolate croissants like we always do. I kinda never want to see a chocolate croissant again, but the coffee I will miss. Not that we don’t have good coffee in San Diego, but our truly good coffee has to be sought out like the holy grail, whereas it’s on every street corner in Rome. …Actually, that’s how Rome is in general. Our most glorious basilica in the United States is copied and pasted a hundred times in Rome. In Rome, you’ll be walking around a church trying to take it all in and figure out which painting is the Raphael you’re looking for, when you find out the church’s relic is Baby Jesus’s manger. Jamie said he didn’t really picture the nativity with a manger of intricately wrought gold, silver, and jewels,…which is what it looks like… but the humble wooden manger is protected inside of it. (The jury’s out in the academic world on whether it really is the authentic manger).

The religious lines got a little wonky for me today. I’m a happy protestant who grew up Evangelical but appreciates the beauty of the more liturgical Presbyterian church. I used to be staunchly reformed and Calvinistic on all things (and I still am), but the older I get the more “big tent” Christian become. In some ways, I think of each type of Christian as a genus that’s entrusted with doing one thing (or a few things) well. The Roman Catholic church has the market on tradition, loyalty, and engaging all five senses.

We went to the oldest church in Rome and I could picture the early home church that started on that spot, and I could see its transformation through the ages, and I could witness people worshipping Christ today. Across the street from the oldest church, there are stairs where Jesus allegedly walked up to his trial (Constanine’s mother brought them from Herod’s palace in Jerusalem). The marble steps are so worn and sloped from thousands of years and millions of Catholics kneeling and praying on them, the steps have been closed for the last three hundred years. They’re open now. For a few months, you can pray on your knees up the twenty-some-odd steps. Even if they aren’t the real stairs Jesus walked on (I can’t turn off the rational part of my brain), it was a moving scene.

I didn’t think anything could top the manger, Herod’s stairs, and the oldest church, but the catacombs were the next thing on the itinerary. I was nervous because it had proved super challenging to get tickets for our group. The lines are long and limited everywhere (and for almost everything) in Rome. So in order to get 22 tickets for anything, we had to book them in advance. The Colosseum, Borghese, and the Vatican were all challenging in their own way, but the catacombs were most difficult on the front side due to the language barrier, specific rules, and lack of 21st-century technology in use to aid communication halfway around the world. After much angst and multiple tries (and being hung up on several times), all I had was an email that said “Your reservation is confirmed”. No order number, no mention of what that confirmation entailed. It worked out perfectly though. A sweet old Italian gentleman had our tickets reserved for us on his handwritten list (the couple behind us were from San Diego too!). All of the guided tours that go through catacombs (and aren’t third-party tours) are led by a priest. Ours was Father Tren. He didn’t look like a stereotypical catholic priest. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, was young, and had a dry sense of humor. He preached the gospel with such sincerity and passion: Though the catacombs are deep underground, dark, and filled with the dead, it is actually a place of hope. Hope in the resurrection. At the end, he prayed for us, that we would be encouraged and strengthened not to get discouraged. To remember those who came before us. To rest in the saving power of the cross. Even the atheist was moved. There are 500,000 Christians buried down there, with marble slates filled with Latin and Greek…lots of them with misspelled words and grammatical errors. The walls are filled with scratchings of messages “I miss you.” “We will see each other again.” “May God be with you”. Father Tren called it “Devotional Graffiti”.

We finished the last day with the usual three-hour dinner from 8pm to 11pm, we’ve got lazy our last few days in Rome and have been eating at the restaurant right next door. The servers gave us hugs tonight and told us to come back…which was big of them. I could never quite tell if they had a panic attack every time we walked in with 12-18 people or if they appreciated the business we brought. Jesse wins the prize for the most adventurous eater this trip with fried sheep brain for first place, and Ben is right behind with squid for second place. Honorable mention to a parent for the consumption of tripe. Jamie wins for most gelato consumed, and Hayley wins for most candy consumed. My favorite dish was veal and artichokes and I will miss being able to enjoy a glass of wine. It didn’t give me a migraine like it does in the States which makes me think it was all in my head in the first place (pun intended?). Maybe I should give wine another try, or maybe I’ve grown out of it.

Not ready to leave, but feeling like a homing pigeon who needs to set the course back for home. I’m not actually a very adventurous person. I don’t particularly love to travel, and I much prefer my own home and people. But my ideas get ahead of what my biological self prefers to do. Thus the conundrum of magical trips like these (but so worth it).

I think I’ve finally hacked it….maybe.

Taking uninterested children to museums and field trips is BRUTAL. On one side you tell yourself that your children need to be educated and cultured and have their horizons expanded, on the other side you have the students/children themselves who are loudly protesting how much they hate said field trip. And then you have all the older responsible folk who are all “when I was a kid, we didn’t complain about…”.

And while you’re trying to internally juggle all the things, you’re also trying to pretend that you have nothing else in the world to do than make everyone happy. You’re not also wondering how you’re going to grade papers, get dinner on, feed the dog, schedule the orthodontist appt etc. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I live for bridging the gap between cranky docents who think “children should be seen but not heard” and said children who are convinced the world is devoid of food and fun.

Now that I think about it, I’m not being sarcastic…that’s literally what I live for. I think I may genuinely enjoy bridging that gap between the old and the new.

But I digress.

I happen to so privileged as to live within bike-riding distance of where the Little House On the Prairie series was written. That’s right. The real Laura Ingalls Wilder herself, wrote the famous books not a stone’s throw away from my house. Consequently, my children have been ~~once~~…or ~~twice~~…or ~~several~~…ok many times to the original homestead tours and museum. So when our CC group had a field trip there, I knew I was going to walk that fun tightrope between the out loud “of course we’re going!” and the intense hushed “yes we are going and you are going to be polite and listen to the tour guide and say “yes ma’am and thank you”.

As I was agonizingly doing math with the youngest beforehand, in an attempt to get school done “early”, I realized I was going to need a backup plan. Having been before, I was mentally imagining a bunch of elementary-aged boys (and girls) trying to squeeze into the tiny 120-year-old kitchen filled with priceless artifacts. AND they were successfully supposed to not move or touch anything. Lord have mercy. So I came up with a “scavenger hunt”.

Now granted, I know this is harder to do if you’re traveling and don’t know what you’re getting into, but I think it’s really a fantastic plan. Kids like goals. Kids like tangible things. Sometimes their brains are too underdeveloped to match the grammar with the rhetoric, so they need a bridge. The bridge in this case was an orange wet-erase marker and a laminated sheet of notebook paper. I scribbled down 15 things for them to find and answer, and I evenly divided the tasks between the exhibits and the museum. The reward was a stick of “Penny candy” that now costs 40 cents. Ho hum. Economics lesson aside, I would happily pay 40 cents per kid in order to not get permanently banned from a museum. Of course, the plan did backfire on me when the kids were SO EXCITED to see Pa’s fiddle and to see where Laura lost the money for her homestead, that they went in like a drove of invasive grasshoppers, and promptly got their butts set down by an elderly docent. By the time I sauntered in (a few moments behind them), she was already wrapping up the “don’t make noise, don’t touch anything, don’t breathe on anything” lecture and was ready to launch into the “how to be a responsible chaperone lecture.” What she didn’t know, was that I am happy to take one for the team, in fact, I’d be happy to have her come lecture my children every morning, but she didn’t seem interested in that. Shocking.

After the field trip was over, my kids said it was the best field field trip ever. So. much. fun.

The key really was the “scavenger hunt” (and maybe the presence of their friends, but who’s counting). Everyone needs a job or a mission, and I totally get it! When I was in Paris, I had a mental checklist of everything I wanted to see, and learn, and understand. Why would kids be any different? They just need a little abstract hand-holding.

I’m going to start doing this every time I find myself chaperoning a field trip where I know I’m going to be in over my head. However next time I’m going to have a chat with the Gift Shop Lady first, and I’m also not going to forget all my scavenger hunt stuff on the table. I’m wondering, should I go back and get my pens and paper? Cut my losses? Save face? or chalk it up to a good laugh?

Also, if you ever come to visit, I will happily show you where Laura and Almanzo’s secret cold spring is, and tell you all the “exclusive conspiracy theory” stories.