La mia Incredibile Avventura Italiana: Leaving

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.