“I am going to miss this moment for the rest of my life.”
My walk home from my evening cooking class consisted of passing through Piazza della Repubblica, just past the carousel, a right turn around The Duomo, a cut through Piazza della Signoria with a left turn at the Fountain of Neptune, a few paces past The Uffizi Gallery and a final destination of a yellow, three-story apartment building, situated perfectly on The Arno, the river that runs through the city. With a belly full of homemade gnocchi and tiramisu, I took this walk one last time on a breezy, sun-setting summer evening, and said to myself out loud: I am going to miss this moment for the rest of my life.
The summer after my freshmen year of college, I studied abroad in Florence, Italy. I got on a big jet plane all by myself, flew across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time ever, and landed in Rome, clenching my passport as tightly as possible. A wave of perfume practically slapped me in the face as I stepped off the plane, and I quickly realized how far away from home I truly was. The smells were different, and so were the sounds and sights. I walked in circles trying to navigate an unfamiliar airport and language, with no international data plan to help me find my way. And then I asked for help. A wonderful couple walked with me to customs and from there, I boarded my third plane of the day to make it to my home for the summer.
Piled into a taxi with three random girls from my flight, I stared out the window with my eyes glued to the view. The term wonder is defined as: “A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.” That right there sums up the feeling I felt staring out the taxicab window. My first drive into the city of Florence had me in absolute wonder, and that feeling stayed with me for the next nine weeks.
I did many things that summer.
I ate. I ate carbonara, my favorite pasta, at every moment I could. I stopped to eat a scoop of gelato every day after class with my best friend, and travel extraordinaire, Journey (quite the fitting name, right?) I ate the most mouth-watering panini’s at the tiny ma' and pa' shop situated just down the block, and I still think about those sandwiches to this day. I ate margherita pizza at the birthplace of pizza itself. I ate pasta bolognese and risotto and cannolis and affogattos and so. much. more. And I drank a good bit too.
I learned. I stepped into Italy with no Italian language under my belt, so I took Italian for three hours every day. But with a head of blonde hair, no matter how hard I tried to speak the language, my identity as an outsider was assumed by practically every Italian I met. I took a drawing and painting course too, where we spent class time visiting the Michelangelo’s, Botticelli’s and Da Vinci’s that decorate the city. We stopped and sat for hours on end to simply stare and sketch, and I learned how to be patient with the creative process. I learned how to cook authentic Italian cuisine under a real-deal Italian chef. I learned how to sprint for a train, to call an Italian ambulance, to sleep with the sounds of the city surrounding you, to avoid the tourist traps, to get lost in a city and find your way back home.
I explored. I spent weekends away at Lake Como, Cinque Terre, Capri, Verona, Santorini, Rome, and more. I sat at the front of a stuffy bus, on the windiest of roads on the Amalfi Coast, car sick to my stomach, and I forced myself to keep looking out the window. Those views were not something I was going to miss. I saw the Sistine Chapel, The David, Juliet’s Balcony, and the Italian Alps, all in the span of a few weeks, and I explored these places with new and old friends by my side. I ran into countless people from home at a time where the world felt bigger than ever before to me, and I was reminded just how small it is.
And speaking of home, I missed it a lot. I remember sitting in Italian class and looking at the world map on the wall almost every day. I often felt queasy looking at all the blue, empty space that stood between me and my home. One day in particular sticks out to me when I think back on homesickness. Journey and I had taken the day to explore Sienna, a neighboring town. Although just a 45-minute train ride and a few hours of roaming, the two of us were exhausted and worn out from the day and the summer heat, so we found a field to lay in overlooking the countryside, and we rested (pictured below). The view was amazing, but my eyes welled with tears. I was looking at one of the prettiest sights in the world, yet what I wanted most at that moment was to be back home. Those moments of homesickness caught me off guard, but they were brief and few and far between. They were there though, and I am thankful for them, because they reminded me just how lucky I am to have a place filled with family and friends, that I love to call home.
Lastly, I documented the whole thing. My journal came with me every step of the way, and I wrote in it almost every single day. I wrote about the wonder, the food and the drinks and the people, the homesickness, the astonishment - the experience in full. My phone came with me too, and I filmed a one second video every day to create a video montage to remember it all. In my first journal entry on the day I landed in Italy, May 30, 2019, I wrote, “I am so blown away by both how beautiful and overwhelming this place is, and I think it will take a long time to fully comprehend it all. This really is going to be the adventure of a lifetime, and it is already everything and nothing like I expected, at the same time.”
And that it was - a summer I will never ever forget. The summer that threw me out of my comfort zone, the summer where every street corner brought a new adventure, the summer that taught me what true wonder feels like.
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