4 days in Rome....

Ok 4 days in Rome...We celebrated our 25^th anniversary while we were there.

A view of the Colosseum you don't normally see. It was ransacked to build other more important buildings over the early Roman years

We walked and bused it all over Rome, including the Colosseum, The Forum, The Trevi Fountain and The Spanish steps. We popped into so many beautiful Churches and saw so many reliquiae it was amazing. S Monica, John Paul II, Padre Pio to name a few
We deliberately did not venture near the Vatican, at first,  as we had Scavi tour tickets. There are only 350 pilgrims allowed access yearly, so when we got the email before we left to say we were granted tickets we were very excited. We met behind St Peters Basilica and Immediately we felt to dampness and the change in air. It is very secure and has many glassed screened doors to keep the area being too exposed to the light and outside and outside environment. We saw the tomb of St Peter and heard so much interesting facts. Brid was keen to carry on a conversation with the Tour guide. She was the youngest on the tour. Infact, she was 6 months too young., but that didn’t stop her asking many quite thought provoking questions. Yeah to Homeschooling and delving into Roman history and the Saints for all these years.
Our tour ended with a viewing of the Papal Catacombs. And then widing up a staircase to be at last inside St Peters. It was Beautiful and what a way to do it. We were so Blessed to have had this experience on this day.

We avoided the MASSIVE queue you can see behind, by doing the Scavi Tour

It was pouring when we finally got ourselves outside several hours later.
There were these street sellers selling, depending on the weather, rain covers, water, hats umbrellas- which they pronouced umbrelli. We had a laugh so often at what they would come out with next, and how much they would reduce there cost for a sale.
We hopped on our Roma bus and got ourselves to our apartment to dry out., via a Gelati shop of course and a look  for somewhere to eat that evening.
The next day was our big day. We had tickets for an audience with Our Holy Father and Vatican Museum tickets. We were all excited and had to be up early to be at the access point by a 9am. As we were still jetlagged and Dermot developed a horrid night cough, we were still quite tired.
Nothing was going to stop this experience from being special. Brid later said being in the same room as our Holy Father was amazing and to be able to understand the many Latin words on the museum exhibits was really wonderful.  To  see the Sistine Chapel with my Family and experience all that Rome had to offer us,  as a family was such a Blessing. God had his hand over us the entire time.

We made use of the waiting time for meals to write postacrds and write up our journal.
 

We leave Rome with many more places to see an excuse to come back and a sense of excitement but nervousness of our next part of our Journey.. God please take care of us.      

A musical History

Brid has been studying history chronologically, starting at the Ancients. Occasionally getting off to delve into an area deeper, like WWII and particularly the Jews,  a few months ago..

But this time through the use of a musical, we have transported her to Argentina and the era of Juan & Eva Peron and his Dictatorship.

We have looked at culture, at the Class system, The aristocats, the high life of society and the world at this time.
It is an country that isn't covered well in world history..

The musical is one of my favourites. EVITA..It is one I studied at school and couldn't wait to purchase it..I asked for it for Christmas one year..
I was totally absorbed in the this country and its politics, culture and language. It wasn;r like today when you can google everything. I researched from the library, the encyclopedia, any source I could. I pieced things together ober many years and felt the plight of the poor people of Argentina.
I really had no agenda to follow this through with Brid, but it just happened.

I played it to her in the car and she stopped often to have various things explained and it has was born from there.

She plans on studying the Greeks and The 20th Century slave trade now that she has completed her indepth chronological history course. It will be very interesting what she comes up with..

coming close to the end of the school year..

The school year here in Australia. is coming to a close. Most schools pack up there books and bags and head for summer holidays from mid December.
We are winding down our official schooling as well. But we can't wind down life learning.
Brid is finishing off a unit study  about Blessed Juniper Serra and his life. She has journeyed to Spain, Mexico and looked into missionary work. She is making a start in this area herself.
Fr Brown has grapped her attention on our ebook reader. I am sure that series will be complete soon.
Maths will come to a hault as well. Will we continue with Maths Online? We will finish this level and reassess it early next year.
So I have asked Brid to complete all areas of work she is working on before mid December.
Ideally I would like to concentrate our days on the season of Advent. It has come around too quickly, but as we organise our christmas decorations into various boxes, it is no trouble to locate the Advent Box. We are looking at various Advent crafts and ideas at the moment.
She has enjoyed reading Apologia Anamtomy & Physiology, making the occasional journal entry, and creating a great board game.
Earlier this year we began a faith text from seton.Witness to Faith. It is there new yr8 text. Some would consider this too schoolie. But it has been a walk through our faith, through the centuries. We won't be completing this as Brid is taking this slowly, enjoying and soaking it in. It has given her a greater understanding of our faith, and thats always a good thing.

Next post, I may share with you the different areas Brid and I have decided we would like to tackle.

So for reading in the holidays I purchased a series called My story. WW1. Brid loves these books and as they were on sale at book depository I could afford to splurge a little.She has already began reading one of them. I need to hand these out individually, or else no chores or work of any kind gets done. Is this controlling, maybe, but its also teaching self control and discipling ones self.

Scotts Last Expedition.

Late last week a few families took an excursion to the Australian National Maritime Museum. I was trying to find an exhibition on the Everest Climb, when I stumbled across this one.
I thought, that would be a good one to see. We hadn't studied much on Antartica or Scott for that matter, so we should see it.
I then noted that the Exhibition was soon to be finishing.
So I asked a couple of homeschooling Mums would they like to join us.
We began our adventure early in the morning. We rose early. Dermot dropped Brid & I to the ferry. We caught it and then walked the 5 minute trip to the station. We purchased our tickets and selected our Carriage. We were meeting 2 other families along the way, so we chose a spot in the train that would best suit us all- with 3 adults, 3 teen girls and 4 young men. Each party joined us and our adventure began.
Soon someone was saying are we there yet. Well 2 hours later we were there.
The Museum is at Darling harbour so we walked from Central Station to the Big water playground at Darling Harbour. There the children ate lunch and we chatted and ate lunch. Umm, we had a little incident with a seagull snatching a sandwich from one of the ladies hands. All We saw was a scurry of birds on the ground and wondered what had happened until, " they look that straight from my hand".  It was a little scary.
Anyway, we moved on to the exhibition. It was rather an amazing exhibit. I knew very little about Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his Expedition.
He travelled on the ship the Terra Nova, from Cardiff, Wales stopping several times along the way. His last stop was NewZealand to prepare for the trip to the South Pole.
The food, the luggage thet took was incredible, but nothing could prepare them for what they would come up against.
There was another explorer as well- Amundsen. He had reached the South Pole. Scotts' exploration was regarding the Emporer Penguin. The trip had the best naturalists ans scientists of the day. Many were interviewed but few were accepted. This is what the Maritime Museum wrote up about the Exhibit:

Scott and his companions outside there hut

-One hundred years after its tragic end, the definitive story of British explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica is being told in this major international exhibition.
Scott's Last Expedition reunites the artefacts used by Scott and his team together with scientific specimens collected during the 1910-1913 expedition for the first time since their use in Antarctica. When Scott set off on his second journey to explore the Antarctic on board the former whaler Terra Nova, he could not have predicted the tragic ending. He and his four companions died on the return trek from the South Pole two years later, having lost the race to be the first.
To commemorate the centenary of the expedition and celebrate its achievements the Natural History Museum, London, the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand and the Antarctic Heritage Trust, New Zealand, have collaborated to create this international travelling exhibition. The premier venue for this unique exhibition is the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, New South Wales-

It was a very moving exhibit. There were various replicas and originals of the clothes and artefacts of the last journey. There was also a full sized replication of the hut that the 20 or so men called home for 3 years. It had positions on the floor for were beds were the table the heater the laboratory etc.
The part that was most sad were the diary entries, of Scott as he and his companions lay dying in there tent many many miles from the base nut. The weather was extreme, the cold biting and there food had run out. There were found 5 weeks later and there resting place is Antartica -were they died.
.
He thought there work would go missing and no one would know of there blight or there discoveries.

This Expedition took place for a theory of the embryo of an Emporer Penguin egg. It was many years later discounted.

So we walked away, enlightened , saddened and pleased we had made the effort to see this exhibit.
A coffee and afternoon tea was in order before we walked the 20 minutes back to Central station for our train home- 2 and half hours away.