The Scholars on the roof of the Teramo Observatory in Teramo, Italy A street in L’Aquila, Italy vSCIENCE continued from page 13 Ciao, Baby! The scholars then jetted to Italy for the final 10 days of their program. For Schild, it marked her first overseas trip. “I’ve been to Canada for three hours, and that’s it,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to travel to Europe. It’s been my lifelong dream. Now that I’ve traveled to Italy, I want to go back.” Once again, Schild went dark for a tour of neutrino and dark matter research. At Gran Sasso, an Italian researcher explained the work at the lab. But this time, she didn’t go deep underground. “Gran Sasso is the largest Lab in Italy and might be the largest one in the world,” she said. “Gran Sasso lab is actually built into the mountain. Instead of going down under the earth, you just drive in. It’s actually really a large tunnel built for experiments. The Sanford and Gran Sasso labs take part in collaborations.” The South Dakota group also visited the Teramo observatory, where they learned about research on how stars are formed and the processes they can go through. The Italian tour wasn’t all about science. The group toured the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Pantheon and a castle, among other sites. “I was in Italy for 10 days, and a lot of the history was just amazing,” Schild said. ”The most rewarding thing was seeing all of the cultural differences. We had a van driver who didn’t speak any English. We struggled to communicate with him, so we tried to use Google translator. Sometimes it worked, The Scholars visited the Pantheon in Rome, Italy sometimes it didn’t.” The Italians also received a dose of “South Dakota nice,” Schild said. “People, especially The Scholars hiked Corno Grande in Gran Sasso in the cities, weren’t used to us always saying National Park ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’” she said. The entire experience has rejuvenated Schild and made her eager for travel and learning. All the researchers said they welcomed any ideas or observations by the young students, Schild said. They see the young students as the future source of scientific breakthroughs. “This makes me more excited for the future, just all the new research that will come out,” she said. “It’ll change the ways we do things. One little detail can change the entire belief system we have.” n —— The Scholars toured the Colosseum in Rome, Italy For more information, visit the Facebook page for the Davis-Bahcall Scholars. HERVOICEvSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018v29