Ciaowdy,
This morning we had the third annual talent show—a performance that each student had to sign up for in order to showcase something that makes them unique. The highlight of the talent show definitely had to be Tanner, Ryan, Jimmy, and Andy’s air band performance to ACDC’s “Thunderstruck.” Other notable acts included wiggling toes, synchronized land-swimming, voluntary sneezing, and juggling a soccer ball while saying the fifty states in alphabetical order. At the end of the show, our Qatar leader Erin Wehrenberg presented each one of us with a personalized superlative based upon our personalities or funny things we’ve done or said. Andy received the Sports Technology Engineering Math award while I received the Rapunzel award for obvious reasons (my long blonde hair). We also received friendship bracelets braided in Italian colors made by our fantastic student leaders. We have both vowed to never remove them from our left wrist.
Later in the day we took a bus ride to Cortona—a small town heavily influenced by the Etruscans and later Renaissance period. We toured the town with our personal favorite tour guide Giovanni, who so happens to be from Cortona. We were pretty tired of eating pasta, so we had bacon and egg (Andy) / cheese pizza (Madison). We shopped around for about an hour before loading back onto the bus to head back to Castiglion Fiorentino. On the bus ride back, we both sat in the back of the bus and sang along to Italian pop and American classics including “Bohemian Rhapsody.” A surprising number of us knew every word to the song… Once back at the hotel, we went into one of the rooms to play an intense card game of Nertz: a game best explained in person. After about an hour, we sat down all together for dinner. We spent the entirety of the meal swapping photos, creating Instagram captions, and laughing at Gibbin’s stories. After dinner, we went to the train station for our last evening of gelato here in Castiglion Fiorentino. After eating our gelato we finished the day by going to the park to watch the lunar eclipse. While the reddish moon was cool, most of us spent the evening socializing with some local teenagers, kicking a soccer ball, and riding the zip line.
Tomorrow we leave at 7 am for the four-hour bus ride to Venice. As we approach the end of our Italy trip, we are so thankful for the time we have shared together and are looking forward to continuing our friendships with each other at fish camp and Texas A&M. Arrivederci and Gig’em!
Madison Korb ’22 & Andy Garcia ‘22
