June 20, 2008

Washington, D.C. - Four members of the Georgetown University men's lacrosse team - rising juniors Andrew Brancaccio (Chevy Chase, Md./Georgetown Prep), Barney Ehrmann (Baltimore, Md./Gilman), Scott Kocis (Huntington, N.Y./Huntington) and Chris Schuville (Lloyd Harbor, N.Y./Cold Spring Harbor) - have been taking classes in Florence, Italy during the month of June.

During the course of their visit to Italy, the players will send weekly updates to www.guhoyas.com, talking about their experiences in the country and their classes. Schuville provides the second Journal from Italy:

"As our stay in Florence continued on into the second week of classes and adventures, we started to get into more of a routine, waking up and either going to our gym - called "klab" - or running to the piazza del Michelangelo, which overlooks all of Florence. After that, we typically head to our two classes, which have both turned out to be very interesting.

"Our classes run from 3 p.m. until 8 p.m., which takes up a majority of the day, but we try to see and experience as much as we can in our free time.

"For lunch, we eat at a number of our favorite sandwich (panini) spots that were all recommended by people who have studied in Florence, including current Georgetown lacrosse player Christian McCormack, who did the same program we are doing last summer and wrote us an elaborate guide for all of us before we arrived in Florence. For dinners we usually go to different restaurants all over the city and indulge in very large meals, consisting of 4 to 5 courses.

"One of the perks of being over here this time of the year has been the excitement of the Euro Cup which is a soccer tournament taking place in Switzerland and Austria and is constantly on TV, with fans from all over Europe going nuts over their teams successes and failures. After our History of the Mafia class today, we have planned to go and watch the Italy vs. France match with our Professor, which should be a great time.

"This past Friday we headed to Rome on the EuroStar, which is a very fast and easy train and took just under two hours, much nicer than Amtrak. In Rome, we were able to see everything we had planned on seeing including the Coliseum, the entire Vatican - including the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica - the Pantheon, the Catacombs, along with the Pope's summer house, Castel Gandolfo, which is located in the hills of Rome and overlooks a huge lake.

"The sights we saw were greater than anything we expected and the fact that we were able to do it all in one day was pretty amazing. Rome was much bigger than Florence and turned out to be pretty expensive because of that fact that we were forced to take cabs everywhere, in comparison to Florence where you are able to walk throughout the entire city.

"Our next adventure takes us to Barcelona on Friday to meet up with several UVA lacrosse players who went to high school with Barney and Scott and are studying for the month in Spain.

"Time is going by too fast but we are making sure that we are making the best of this opportunity to study and enjoy Florence and different cities throughout Europe for this month!"