What Travel Writing in Italy Taught Me

Days after the spring semester completed, I boarded a airplane alongside seventeen different
Covenant college students for a world May Term in Italy. The class? Nonfiction Travel
Writing, taught by our very personal Dr. Sarah Huffines and award-winning Christian writer
Daniel Nayeri. Our objective? Walk sixty miles on an historic pilgrimage route, expertise
the Italian countryside and Rome, and write about it.

Week One: Noticing

We spent our first week strolling the ultimate stretch of the Via Francigena, a longtime
pilgrimage route that leads straight into St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Each day,
we walked about ten miles by way of fields, orchards, and hill cities. As we shared tales
and laughter, we famous sensory observations (the sound of a thunderstorm, the style
of Nutella tart at a restaurant) in our journey journals to make use of for our closing essays. I’d
been taught to follow noticing in my very first inventive writing classroom, however
that was completely totally different from devoting per week to it beneath the umbrella pines of
the Italian countryside. 

Week Two: Pilgrims and Tourists

We reached St. Peter’s Basilica exhausted however exhilarated! Walking in as a pilgrim—in
the literal footsteps of pilgrims from centuries previous—was unforgettable. It felt like
the distinction between strolling previous a portray in a museum and getting into the
portray itself. And after per week of noticing, my response to magnificence had modified. 

As we spent the week working towards method and researching independently, I stored feeling
a distinction between the writing pilgrim and the filming vacationer. Instead of making an attempt
to seize the whole lot, I discovered significance within the small issues I might jot down with
pencil on paper. Though I most likely noticed only a quarter of Rome’s architectural splendor,
this really freed me to understand what I did see inside my embodied limits. A Caravaggio
portray, not the Colosseum, made it into my closing essay. 

Week Three: Weaving It All Together

After a free weekend, our class reconvened for a author’s retreat close to Orvieto. Secluded
in a Fifteenth-century fortress nestled among the many wooded hills, we made tiramisu with Professor
Nayeri and labored on our closing journey writing items. Then, on our final day on the
fortress, each pupil learn a part of their essay for the entire class. Tile fragments
scattered throughout the path, a carving in Saint Paul’s jail, a random purple cloud—it
was lovely to see how every of us had traced a unique story in our shared pilgrimage. 

Ultimately, I’m glad I selected this Covenant May Term as a result of it taught me that loving
a spot contains loving its particulars. And writing—writing typically, observantly, and typically
poorly to get our ideas out—is essential to turning into grateful, curious individuals who love
the locations God calls us to on the pilgrimage of life. 

Learn extra about research overseas applications right here: Study Abroad | Covenant College