Our Crest

As part of our education here in Rome, each apartment is required to create a family crest. The above crest was ours.

Like most family crests, ours is filled with symbolism. Allow me to explain.

Each person in our apartment is represented through some sort of image in the crest. Because Johanna's favorite color is orange, and because she is so well known for her orange "ho-bag", our crest is orange. Instead of the papal keys, we have clubs because I love to juggle so much. The Medici-like juggling balls also harken to my juggling, and represent the number of balls I can (sort of) juggle. The small flip flop on the right is Julie's, and reminds us of the hardship she went through when it broke. On top of the crest we have a culinary tiara which Shannon, our Honors Chef, is represented in. And last but not least, the butterfly represents Rebecca, for reasons I am not entirely aware of. But, it does.

Each part of the butterfly's wings has a letter, one for the first initial of each of our names. There is also an "H" in the lower left portion, which stands for "Honors".

Oh, and we mustn't forget the flowers and snake, which lie in the center and serve to represent the apartment as a whole. At a first glance, the symbolism seems obvious: we have a snake because we're in piazza del Biscione (the piazza of the water snake), and a flower because we're near the campo de fiori (the field of flowers). But there is a bit more to it than that.

We don't just have any flower, we have a yellow rose, which represents friendship. Because everyone in our apartment gets along so well, and our apartment is the main hang out spot for Honors students when they have nothing to do, friendship and community is a huge theme for us here.

Anyway, that's our apartment crest in a nutshell. Our apartment is incredibly diverse. Yet we somehow manage to get along really well. And I'm really happy about that.