I am Rosella writing again.  Today  is July 6. After we left  Elba island last night,  Ragga told us the story the Count of Monte Cristo. The story starts with a poor man who is put in prison. He meets a priest who speaks of the island of Monte Cristo when there is a huge treasure. The priest dies and the man changes clothes with the dead man. By pretending to be dead, he is able to get free.  He sees a ship  that lets him work as a cleaner of the ship.  One day  the ship passes an island, but he doesn’t know that it is the island of Monte Cristo until the captain tells him. He pushes a small rescue boat from the ship into the ocean and he uses it to get to the beach. He go to the monastery because the priest told him that the treasure could be found in the ruins of the monastery.  He goes to the monastery and starts to dig in the dirt.  Finally he finds the treasure of gold and jewels. He reconstructs the ship and goes to France.  The island has always been uninhabited, but he can buy the island with coms of the treasure money. Today we go in the Monte Cristo Island to visit.  After we arrived at the island we went up the mountain and after we visited the house of the Savoia. We ate lunch and played volleyball. It was very nice.    

Hi everyone, my name is Rossella and I was chosen for the Nave Italia because I have Chromosome 22. Other of the group were chosen for other reasons. I would like to begin by explaining what we are doing from when we get up in the morning. We have breakfast at 7:30, (and don’t arrive late or you will have an extra chore added to your daily ship duties, like washing the dishes even if it isn’t your turn!) At 8:30 we clean the ship. Every day during the day we have various group activities. These activities include, for example, games which help us develop trust with the other team members. In the evening we talk for a while or we dance and watch the stars. This experience is very beautiful because it is the first time I've gotten to know people from other countries. Most of the team members aren’t Italian - therefore we must speak English. For example, I am sharing a room with a girl from Germany. I’m not an ace in English but I am beginning to understand the others and I am speaking a bit better myself. The games we play are to develop more trust, as I said before. When we play these games, we must be calm and patient. Now I can’t tell you about all the games we've played, but I can say that they were each very beautiful. One of these exercises challenged all of us to go through a web made of ropes -- without touching the cord. This was very fun because in the beginning, we didn’t have a strategy but then we understood that without a strategy we would not go anywhere. Some of my friends were scared to be lifted up, so we had to convince them to trust us to carry/push them through. Today there was an apnea diving instructor who taught everyone to dive under water. I didn’t join this activity, because the day before I had tried to go underwater but as soon as I saw everything dark, I became so scared that I returned to the surface faster than I went down! If I can return next year, I would be very happy... even if I know that it isn’t possible. Now I go to watch my friends swim. Greetings and kisses, Rossella P.S. We have to be very patient because there might be other people with problems.