It's Amazing!

It feels like forever since my last post even though it has only been a few days! This past Thursday was a full day of class and homework. We had guest speakers in the morning and learned about a mock town hall meeting in the afternoon. Friday was the actual town hall meeting. In this, every student was assigned a role and had to act out townspeople who faced potential land contamination for a combination of mining and military activity. There were a lot of variables throughout this debate but our class was able to come up with a conclusion. I also found it interesting to experience how certain roles included the power you have over the audience. This is something that seems obvious but the corresponding feelings are stronger when in character.

This weekend we had cultural excursion on both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday we spent the morning souvenir shopping, which quickly evolved to shopping shopping, which slowly evolved into a hearty lunch. In the afternoon we hiked Sella del Diavolo, which means the devil's saddle. This is the rock formation we sailed around on a previous excursion. The story behind the name is the devil fell from the sky and landed on these rocks as a saddle. One interesting part of this hike was we started in the evening only a few hours before sunset. I could imagine if we had gone in the peak of the day it would have been hot as hell. The weather was a little different, a cooler 75°F and overcast. You may laugh but it has been in the 80's for so long it is tough to consider the difference. The variety of the weather, especially when you come from New England, is one thing that I am starting to miss. Fortunately, I am headed to the Netherlands in a few weeks and will get a drink of rain.

View of Cagliari

View of the salt marshes where all the flamingos are found

Ted's final moments, at least Danielle looks good...

Annalisa!

Roomie Audriana <3

Roomie and Annalisa

Enough about the weather. Today Danielle and I tried to go to church but were a little confused on the timing were too afraid to go in late. Instead we stumbled upon the Museo Diocesano del Duomo and viewed the ornate vestments of priests dating back to the sixteenth century. We also viewed Spanish and Sardinian sculptures, oil paintings, and a gorgeous, gold chalices. We thought the tour was over then our guide brought us 3 stories under the building to a tomb and cistern. It was amazing to see a building so plain have such a great depth of open space under it. It definitely makes me think twice on some of the places we pass. We then at dinner on a ledge overlooking the Sella del Diavolo and enjoyed our cappuccinos.

This afternoon we celebrated Saint Catherine in a quaint town called Orroli. There was a parade of towns from all over Sardinia dressed in traditional costumes to honor this event. In a way Orroli reminded me of a small town parades I am familiar with from home. The biggest exception was the horses and instead of candy the "floats" (repurposed tractors covered in beautiful fabrics) threw cookies. It was a treat! We ended the evening with some traditional Sardinian dancing, which wasn't as easy as I would have expected. I am going to blame the counts of the music but it may have been from the exhaustion of too many happy, full days.

Tomorrow is our last full day here. We are presenting our final projects. My group was assigned to work on designing a composting and anaerobic digestion plant for the city of Boston. The city recently banned restaurants and institutions who produce more than one ton of food waste each week from disposing of their organic food waste in landfill. This means that the surplus of waste will be redirected to a resource recycling center, hence the need for composting and anaerobic digestion. Some interesting pilot studies we considered were reutilizing Deer Island, Greater Boston's wastewater treatment plant. Deer Island has these massive egg-shaped digesters. Although this is a little different than direction my group decided to go in, it would be a good solution that could happen in the not so distant future.