Maria Dolens bell

On the Nazi Trail has been an amazing trip with both education and fun integrated into the class. There is not one single day that went by without us learning some kind of fact or interesting history about buildings /artifacts.
In this trip we went to many castles in Italy and saw various forms of arts. I have to say that the most common muse in each gallery included religion such as Mary and Christ, but each painting was different! We went through so many art galleries that we are art-out at this point in time. However, whenever we were presented with the opportunity to go see more art such as the fiasco in the tower of a castle in Trento, we took it voluntarily because it is a great opportunity. 
In that same castle I learned more about the use of it that had me in complete shock. Giancarlo walk me through what appeared to be a beautiful backyard and translate what the stone marking meant. It was to my amazement, to find out that each rock represented the location where some captured Italians were killed. In each stone, the name and form of death (shot/hung) was engraved. They also had photographs of the actions! How morbid is that? To actually document someone’s death!
On our way to Verona we had made two more stops along the way, one at an Italian soldier memorial and another at a world peace bell name Maria Dolens. This two places had a huge impact on me because it is at the memorial that I found out that Giancarlo actually served in the Army in Italy which made me understand more his views of the military and I couldn’t believe that I set foot at an Italian Military memorial before I’ve had a chance to visit Arlington cemetery in WA, D.C. I’m still honor to learn about other country’s military and how many of them like ours remain MIA and how many of them were also KIA. We, no matter of race/ethnicity/or birthplace are all humans fighting for some cause such as freedom or other…
This brings us to the next stop at the Maria Dolens bell that stands for world peace. This bell has one goal in mind which leaves hope of someday reaching world peace as a whole. How amazing is that? I never knew such a bell existed. I’ve learned so much from this trip and I feel privileged to have shared this with all my student colleagues and staff members that did a great job setting this whole trip up.

-Rosa Chavez
Group 1