Multidisciplinary cohort fun and hosting: Weekends home

April 3rd - Raveena and Urbino, Italy (home away from home)

Our visit to Raveena was a great experience and full of beautiful sights, but, admittedly, one of the more interesting and perhaps enjoyable parts for me was seeing how excited the literature majors were about visiting an exhibit about Dante.  It is something I hold in great admiration, and I think that, because we were such a multidisciplinary cohort, we've all had our time to really enjoy certain things on our travels. In this specific visit, many of us were able to chime in with different perspectives and our knowledge, piecing together and influencing each other's experiences in these exhibits.  I vividly remember walking through one of the hallways that was supposed to be purgatory with Sofia. As we were reading these excerpts of Dante's work on the wall, she would bring up a historical fact about the figures Dante was writing about, and then we would turn to Elise to tell us how they played a part in the Comedy.  I perhaps had too much fun with the language while hearing the story in Italian. We walked through the city for a good while, and it was just a fun time overall.  We also had lunch together as a whole cohort, which we hadn't done in a very long time.  I remember ordering a piadina, thinking to myself that it would be one of the last times I would have one.  After all, I grew very fond of them because they became my saving grace when Mensa was closed. I always had something to make in the dorm.  As we were walking around, we did get lost, or rather misguided by  Google Maps, at one point.  But even then, our getting lost still led us to make some fun memories, I'd like to think, like seeing a really cute dog through a fence and seeing a fun Cafe called L'Etoile, which made me so extremely happy because 1. It's French 2. It means star. And 3. It reminded me of a song called Ma p'tite Etoile that I love. 

That weekend was big for me, since it was my first major holiday without family.  Usually, for Easter, we'd all get together, share food, play board games, and, of course, crack eggs on each other's heads.  However, this Easter weekend was met with a very different energy, almost like a home away from home. 

I will find any excuse to get people together. I love planning dinner parties, or really anything to bring people together.  So it was really no problem for me at all, and on the contrary, an honor to host an Easter dinner in the dorm.  I made everything from food and sides to vegan options and dessert.  We all got together and watched movies. At one point, we had so much left over that we even offered it to other people in the dorm. Around this time on the trip, I asked myself a lot whether the way I was acting was authentic or how I wanted to show up for others, and seeing everyone laughing together and just getting along, with my food as the excuse, made me so incredibly happy.