Engineering in Rome

I had some difficulty connecting to the internet in the past couple days. The pictures will be added later...sorry again, but I am having some issues loading them because I am using the hotel's computer and do not have the software I need to upload them onto the blog. I will continue to try to upload them, but might not get them on here until we get back. With Tony's permission, I'm going to use some of his pictures. Sorry about that, but below is what I wrote for Wednesday January 21st:

Today was cloudy as usual. We went to Michelangelo’s marble quarry. It has been raining a lot lately so we weren’t able to go down to the quarry, but we learned a lot about how they cut it and carve it. It was fascinating to see how big these marble blocks were that they were cutting. When we saw where they were carving the marble it was filled with dust and no one was wearing masks to protect their mouths and noses, we thought this was a little odd because they could do some damage to their lungs. The guy who was giving us a tour explained that they do not need masks because it is calcium carbonate and so it is safe to ingest. He said that old people used to go there to help their osteoporosis.

There was a lot of engineering involved at the marble quarry. We saw the tools they used to cut the marble and they had a liquid running on it for cooling purposes. The cooling liquid they use is also filtered and recycled which was really interesting to me. They let us take some marble home with us too!!

We drove up the mountain a ways and into a quarry. It was very muddy here and the guy who owned it came down and talked to us about it. He explained that three people work in this quarry, including him and his son. He showed us the tools they use to get the marble out of the side of the mountain.

For lunch we drove up the mountain further and searched for a place that served lard. The lard is their specialty in this town. It was a very small town and everyplace was closed for some reason, but one restaurant opened for us so that we could try the lard. It wasn’t bad, it had an interesting texture to it.

The leaning tower of Pisa is still leaning, we saw it today. Some of us even climbed to the top of it. It is actually shaped like a banana. In the baptistery by the leaning tower of Pisa there are two domes and the echo is very interesting so everyday they have demonstrations of the sound. You can hear the sound bouncing off the two domes and the lady who was singing made a chord by singing the different notes at different times. It was neat to hear. You are not allowed to make loud noises like she did, only the person who is working can do it. The baptistery is for people to be baptized in. This is a separate building because you were not allowed to enter the church if you were not baptized. Pisa is where Galileo was born. There were street vendors trying to sell us watches and purses and you name it. This was interesting because they were persistent in trying to get us to buy something. Some people bargained for watches to try and talk them down for the price.

For dinner we ate at the same place that we ate at last night. It is an interesting little restaurant that is below the ground. You have to walk down stairs to get to it. Rice and peas were served for the first course and the main course was pork with spinach and potatoes. Our dessert was tiramisu. It was good and tasted like coffee. This was very different from the meal that we had last night.

Phrase of the day: E troppo caro which means “that’s too expensive” pronounced eh trohp-poh kahroh.