mccollaum fam: April 2008

Sunday, April 13, 2008

I mentioned the Cumaen ruins that are just down below our house on one of the previous posts. These pictures are a few from our visit there. The ruins are set up on a high hill that overlooks the bay much like where you would normally see a light house. You can imagine why the ancient Greeks built their temple and great entrance to the city there. It must have looked quite spectacular to any ships coming into the bay.
Here is a side view from the temple site. You can see out to the City entrance and beyond the hillside is the ocean. (It's a little overexposed, but that is the ocean.)

Here is a shot of Peter and his two friends. We went with a really nice family that will be moving to California in just a few months. They've been able to tell us a lot about fun things to do while we are here.

Believe it or not, climbing all over the ruins is perfectly acceptable. No one had a problem with it, and it was just part of the trail. But as our children were running down the path, we were lectured, because they might fall and hurt themselves! This is so typically Italian!

Base of a giant greek columb at the temple site. Just Paul's size!

You can see several different construction techniques. Some look like red bricks, and another is a criss-cross pattern of stones. These would have been completely covered in marble tiles. In some places you could see the marble still attached at the base. It must have been spectacular!

Here is where we got lectured! Cute kids, though! :)

This one is the city entrance. It has been excavated and is far below the current surface, home to only bats and birds. Obviously there are a series of nets to keep people from falling in. I was explaining to Rachel all about the ancient civilization and their city, and she asked me, "But mom, how did they get down there?" I thought that was a pretty good question and started explaining how the surface used to be way down there at that time. Interupting me, she said, "No mom, not that, how did the birds get down there?" What can I say...a little age, maturity, and understanding can change your perspective a whole lot!

And this one is an ancient calander. A little hard to read! We did have a lot of fun, and it inspired in some of us, the desire to know more about these ancient people and their way of life. To others, they were very cool old rocks. :)

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Well, I know we've been doing a really bad job at keeping the blog spot up, but to make up for it we put tons of pictures in this post, so hopefully you will forgive us. Well, we're all pretty much completely moved into the house, and we're now getting settled in enough that we're going to be updating the blog spot alot more now. The pics on this post are of dad's visit to Milan and mom and dad's special date day visit to Procida. There all really pretty pics. Here they are:

This is at the beach of Procida, very pretty.

There's superbo modello padre!!

Isn't that beautiful??

There are lot's of small streets over here, they're really pretty, our road that we walk to school on everyday is a really tiny cool road, except now the italians are widening it. My parents are very happy about it, I'm really sad about it though, but then again, I'm not the one driving!! The other road is still small though, my young women president (she's an american) scraped up her mini van on that road. It was terrible!! All the girls heard the screech on the car and we all froze, it wasn't cool!! Now she won't drive on my road any more!!

Molto bello!!

These are on the front of one of the churches, pretty huh?

The beautiful view at Procida.

They're extremely pretty, next time I'm going with mom and dad!!

My cute parents!