Rosary College - Yearbook (River Forest, IL)

Page 19 text:

December twenty-eighth found us chugging up through the snow-covered Alps in a little mountain train on our way to Wengen for a week of winter sports. Bursting with vim and vigor, we held up traffic on the ski trails, tea-danced in our dainty ski boots, and welcomed the New Year at a formal ball. March brought the mid-semester vacation, and in a frenzy of excitement we set off for a month's trip in sunny Italy. Venice, with its graceful gondolas and its basilica of San Marco, still floats through our day dreams. Our lovely rooms at the Dominican Villa Schifanoia in Florence were a luxurious haven after days of sight-seeing in this city of art treasures. Early one morning in Assisi, we made a pilgrimage on foot to the hermitage of St. Francis; Mass that morning was particularly moving in the humble rock chapel that he had built. No one could have prepared us sufficiently for the splendor of St. Peter's in Rome. As Our Holy Father smiled and gathered us all in with his majestic, but humble blessing, we realized that this moment alone would have made our year full and complete. The days of the second semester, highlighted by a memorable trip to Oberam- mergau, Germany, to witness the Passion Play, slipped from our grasp. With a strange mingling of sadness at leaving Fribourg and joy at the prospect of the next month of travel which was to terminate in New York, we packed our suitcases for the last time. Final farewells are never easy to say, but our hearts were filled with gratitude to those who had given us our golden year in Fribourg. We breathed deeply of the charm of old Spain in the lovely classical city of Barcelona, and again in the bustling capital, Madrid. Several days spent in the simple town of Lourdes brought new life to our faith as we knelt at the grotto of Our Lady and witnessed the beautiful blessing of the sick in the piazza before the basilica. Our final twelve days in Paris were the cherry on the sundae. During those happy days rhe Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the cathedral of Notre Dame, the Arch of Triumph be- came cherished friends. On delightful late-summer afternoons we strolled through the lovely Luxembourg Gardens, window-shopped along the fabulous Rue de la Paix, and wandered through the winding, atmospheric streets of the Latin Quarter. Excitement ran high as we boarded the train for Cherbourg, where the QUEEN ELIZABETH was waiting to carry us home at last! It was an extraordinary sensation, that commotion in our hearts. We felt our- selves strangely suspended between two loves. But on the final morning of our voyage, we were filled with a wonderful reassuring peace as our straining eyes first caught sight of a wondrous Greek figure, her torch held high in welcome, silhouetted against a gray-blue sky.