I woke up this morning feeling much better than yesterday. I still need to walk a bit more slowly than usual though.
So over the past month, our group contacted the Department of Sammarinese History and Culture at the University of San Marino to schedule a potential interview with the students and the teachers. They connected us to local high school teachers and students who were knowledgeable in that field. This took me three calls explaining them who we were, what we wanted to do through this project, and that we were not creeps! The fact that I can now do this in Italian with semi-confidence goes to show, I think, how amazing this program is. 9 months and baam - you have a pretty good grasp of the language! Anyway, our group met up with the teachers and the students who gave us a ton of useful information that can be used for our presentation in Italian to the school and host families (yep, Capstone is a big project).
Afterwards, we went to the National Archives to see if there were any primary texts we could potentially use for our project. Despite the lack of an appointment or reservation, they gladly welcomed us and provided us with the entire digital archive they possessed. We knew that the idea of hospitality is quite stressed in the Sammarinese culture, but how amazing is this? Imagine these Sammarinese professionals wanting to help out foreign students who speak decent Italian and are looking for documents written in ancient Greek and Latin. Now that's an experience that I will not forget.
It started raining in the afternoon, so we headed back to our hotel where we watched some movies on Netflix. But eventually the sky cleared up, so we went out to the balcony and were breathtaken. Just picture seeing this scenery from your hotel room!!
If I have to talk about what an ideal Capstone trip would look like, I would use today as an example: setting up an appointment to talk to the locals, being welcomed by governmental officials, enjoying the breathtaking scenery, and simply having fun while practicing our Italian skills. It is quite sad that I have to go back to Viterbo tomorrow. But I know that San Marino will definitely hold a special space inside me for a while.