In March as we found ourselves quickly adjusting to working from home, I was hearing from friends what a struggle it was to try and keep their kids focused on the home schooling they needed to do while also trying to keep up with their jobs. I offered to keep the kids occupied for an hour or two each week with an art class just for them. This has been a great way to have some fun while also giving me great ideas for how I can make my college level courses more engaging online. I figured if I could get 7-10 year olds to focus and learn for an hour, I’d have some good skills to share with 20-somethings.
Venice, Florence, Milan — November 2019
Looking back now, I am more grateful than ever that we had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks in one of my favorite counties. We never could have guessed back in November that five months later, the country and the world would be ravaged by a highly contagious disease.
We planned the trip around the Venice Biennale. We would spend the first 5 days in Venice taking in as much art as humanly possible. Days before we left, Venice began experiencing the highest floods since 1966. The city is accustomed to some ‘acqua alta’ in the Fall and Winter, but this high water was extreme. So extreme that the Biennale was forced to close for a few days before we arrived and just slowly began to reopen the day after we got there. Our original accommodations were canceled while we were enroute and the whole situation was looking pretty bleak. Luckily we found a great AirBnB on the third floor of a building designed for high water with nothing on the ground floor except a marble entry way and a raft for tenants to borrow. Even with all the drama in the hours leading up to the trip, this ended up being one of the most amazing times I have had in Italy, and that is saying a lot! It doesn’t hurt that we were traveling with good friends and excellent travel companions.
Here are a few of my favorite visual memories from the trip. (Click the image to move forward.)
