La mia Incredibile Avventura Italiana: June 2013

I kind of felt bad about just leaving this blog for good just because my time as an AFS student was over. I feel like now and this next year my AFS experience will continue when we host Giudi from Bari Italy. During the past 2 weeks its been an adjustment, and when I was talking to Wildes (the pretty girl from Main who was with me in Rovigo for the second semester...remember her?) I came to one conclusion that when I repeated to my mom she said I should write it down somewhere because it would be good to look back on in a few years. I guess this summer will be a summer of readjustment, and when Giudi arrives my role will be changed, not as the exchanger but as the host sister. I hope my experiences will help me be a better host sister, and she will help me see things in yet another way. I mean, besides me, who will look at my journal years from now? Who will look at my blog? I hope many.

So I have been back 2 weeks now. REALLY hard to believe it seems like much longer. anyway....so I was talking to Wildes I think my first week back and she was saying to me that she is really sad about leaving, and kind of nervous too. This is coming from a girl who has missed things from home ever since she got here...but she told me that now, as she was packing up boxes to send home, that week she had kind of stopped missing everything and enjoying life there so she was sad to think about returning. This I understood, as i have talked about in my other posts, leaving is not easy. But what I told Wildes was:

"once you start accepting your experience and loving your new friends and family, you realize that maybe love exists everywhere around the world. And how what was "home" was only called that because that was the first place you found/knew people who loved you for who you were...but when you find other people who love you and you love them just the same, in another place, you realize that maybe you can live away from the place you called "home" and are able to call other places home...all over the world."

This is what happens in exchange year...and semester for that matter...you understand this. And I don't think anyone who hasn't been an exchange student has ever experienced this. But I feel like it is important that we all experience/understand this at some point in life.

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I guess when I posted this yesterday I forgot to say what its like being home. It was really really strange the first week. When I got out of the airport at NY, the first thing I noticed was how huge everything was. I said "che grande macchine!!!" (what huge cars!!) I am used to the Fiat 500s in Italy and those sized cars. Mini vans are more like small buses to them, and trucks exist but are few and far between. As we got going and I started sharing stories of Italy, I bet my mom was hoping I would go to sleep soon because for an hour there I wouldn't shut up. haha :) I got home home at like2:30 in the morning, the first thing I realized was how huge our house is. Like I mean its average for an American house, but for Italians its huge. We are so fortunate. The next thing I said was "OH! CARPET!" I have not had my toes on carpet the whole time I was in Italy. Maybe it doesn't exist there or its more expensive, who knows, but I missed it a lot. My energy then was running on nothing but adrenalin. I got on facebook and let everyone in Italy know I got home safely, and I emailed my Italian mom to say the same thing. The next morning I woke up pretty early...8:30. I am not sure why. I spent the day with my mom. Then Friday she went to work, and I stayed home. I began to (and still have not completely gotten over this) miss the huge lunches with i Nonni (the grandparents). Here its so small and there is like nothing. Like your telling me all I can eat for lunch is a sandwich? Or soup? That's just a first course in Italy! Mer. And like yes I can cook it but its kind of sad if you make a 2-3 course meal and then you eat it alone...that afternoon Alessandro came to stay with us. He would stay 2 days and then me, him and Berandette would go to Rehoboth Beach together. That was a fun weekend. But when I got home I realized geez there is nothing to do. My friends all live 15+ minutes away, and that's in a car. There is no going to the town center by foot to hang out with everyone, I mean until we all get our license that won't be entirely possible without the help of our parents. This bothered me for a while. Another thing I still struggle with is mixing up the languages. I will randomly say something in Italian rather than English. Or I would know it in Italian but forget the English word. I am dreaming more in English than Italian now. And I think in all English usually.

2.5 weeks (but it feels more like 2.5 months!) later I am doing well. Excited to get away for the 4th of July. If I had returned on schedule I would have missed the festivities. So that's a plus! :)

The title sounds so dull, and sad, but you know, it fits. I found out the "for sure" plans yesterday afternoon. I will be leaving tomorrow morning from the Venice airport, go to Rome, catch a flight at 3 pm to Zurich Switzerland, and then catch my flight to the USA at 525 pm. It will be a long day...but I am pretty sure it will stay "Wednesday" the whole time...whoa. Time change is so cool.

I thought it was awful, the fact that I am ending this 3 weeks early, missing Italian summer vacation....but whatever. I mean, most say "its basically over anyway" and well, maybe it was, but I have grown to love these people so much, last night at the party, made me love them even more. And, well, every second counts, I will make it a point to see them again, but who knows when I ACTUALLY will. Its so much harder to say goodbye when you don't know when you will be able to say hello again.

Popular questions of the night last night:
-are you done packing your suitcase? um no, almost yes, but yeah there are some things i need to do. I will do that when I am finished with this post.
-are you happy to go home to see your family? Yes. But it's not easy leaving here either.
-will you come back? Of course, but I don't know when.
-Did you have fun this year? YESSS! Of course! Yeah there were difficult points, but it was an amazing year. I grew as a person, and learned more about myself, and the world. Trine (from Norway) is my new best friend (no grace, your not replaced!). And I now have a new family. We laugh together always, and even though it was tricky at the beginning, now, I can share anything with them. My life would not be complete without knowing them. And my class, 3C, are an amazing group of kids, so nice, funny, a little wacko, but they were always there to help me try and learn Italian from the beginning.

Abraham Lincoln said "In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” and, I think this year held a lot of life. I ate new things, went to a ton of new places, met a bunch of amazing people, and began to figure out who I really am.

I guess I could finish off this blog post, with a bunch of pictures...cuz I think that is probably the cooler part of blogs. I want to say thank you to my parents and host parents for supporting me, my real ones for supporting me in doing this, and my host parents for supporting me all those difficult days. To all the volunteers who helped me out this year. To all of you guys who are debating on going on exchange, go for it. It may be difficult, but defiantly worth it. To those who are going next year, good luck, have the time of your life, these memories will last. To my true friends here, who I found after a little while, who never stopped being there for me. I love you so much, I will miss you, and we MUST keep in touch. I don't want this goodbye to be the end of our story.