For most UCO students, summer school means humid treks across campus to long classes under humming florescent lights.
For the 18 students in Dr. Mark Hanebutt’s Travel Reporting class it means a 1,211-mile trek under the Tuscan sun.
“We’re in Italy,” Hanebutt said. “I am trying to introduce my students to other cultures and peoples and places while teaching them another aspect of journalism.”
Hanebutt and the students, along with Dr. Jesse Miller, left Oklahoma City at 12:40 p.m. on Saturday, July 11, and after a brief layover in Chicago, arrived in Rome Sunday morning around 8:45.
“It was tiring…very long and exhausting,” Safiya Lucas, a senior, said. “I felt like I was sleepwalking. I showered and…had like a twelve hour sleep.”
The class left Rome the next morning at 8:30 and drove north, stopping at the medieval town of Orvieto on their way to Poggibonsi, where they stayed for four nights, using it as a hub for excursions into the cities of San Gimignano, Siena, Florence and Pisa during the day.
During the outings, Hanebutt, who spends most of his time doing headcounts, requires the students to stay in groups of three or more and one of the members of the group must have a cell phone.
In Florence some of the students waited an hour and a half and paid 10 euros a piece to get into the Galleria dell ‘Accademia, The Gallery at the Academy where Michelangelo’s David is on display.
“It was amazing,”Amanda Siegried, a senior and photojournalist major, said. “Photographs don’t do it justice. We could see the veins in his arms and the muscles in his back. I loved the detail.”
Traveling on a 50-seat tour bus with 27 other people from Australia, New Zealand, Wales, Germany, Tasmania, Canada and the United States, the UCO students are getting a detailed two-week view of the Tuscany countryside.
From the road their views are bombarded with clusters of Cypress, Palm, Umbrella Pines and Pioppi (poplar) trees as well as acres of vibrant sunflower fields that randomly break through the multi-shades of greens.
Grandiose homes akin to fortresses also dot the hillsides with vineyards and olive tree orchards that march up the hills like columns of Roman soldiers.
“It’s enough reason to stay here and not want to go home,” Sean Beall, a senior and broadcast major, said. “It’s not littered with so much crap that we have in America like [billboards and fast-food restaurants].”
A large part of the student’s itinerary involves driving through the Apennines Mountain Range, which is considered the spine of Italy.
The class left Poggibonsi on Friday, July 17, and headed 250 miles north, crossing the
Tuscany border into the Emelia-Romana region around 8:30 in the morning and driving into the flat lands of the Po Valley.
They stopped at Verona where they took a guided walking tour of the ancient city and visited the famous Romeo and Juliet balcony, and then headed east to Padua and then the Venice area, where they stayed for two nights.
“I loved Venice. It smelled bad but, hey, we dealt with it,” Lucas said.
The class left Venice early Sunday morning on July 19. Driving south through the flat, muted-green Northeast of Italy along the Adriatic Sea, the tour bus passed small weeds slowly claiming decapitated wheat fields, orchards of the Italian poplar trees and cornfields almost ready to harvest.
Not long after leaving the Venice area, the foliage and fields gave way to the Venetian saltwater lagoon and fish farms before Romea Freeway cross the Brenta, Adige and Po Rivers back into the Apennines.
The tour stopped in the city of Ravenna for a couple hours before navigating the narrow, spiralling roads with 90, 20 and 10-degree turns that lead to the independent republic of San Marino.
The tiny country lies on the Adriatic and is situated in the middle of the Apennines. The oldest record of San Marino is dated from 300 A.D. and has four medieval castles rising from the top of the mountain like fortified stalagmites.
“It was my favorite part of the trip, so far,” Beall said. “San Marino had a lively downtown vibe mixed with an old-fashioned lifestyle, which I loved.”
Monday the group will be staying in the Assisi Area for one night before driving 243 miles to Naples, where they will stay for three nights with daily excursions to Pompeii, Sorrento and the island of Capri.
From there they will go back to Rome where they stay for two nights.
They will visit the Colosseum and the Vatican and have some free time to do as they please, before returning to Oklahoma on July 26.
“The Italian people seem to be very open to explaining things about their culture to you…they want you to learn about it,” Amanda Siegfried said.
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