I hope you have enjoyed watching and learning along with me this fall semester in Italy. I also hope you have learned a lot about studying abroad and what a positive impact it can have on a college student’s life.

I cannot even begin to describe what this opportunity to study abroad and to share my experiences on J.Y.A. has meant to me. Living in Rome, even if it was for only 4 months, was a dream come true. It was the perfect place for me to study abroad; it fit on so many levels: for one, the culinary adventure was amazing; additionally the churches and the proximity of the seat of Catholicism (i.e. the Vatican) made for meaningful spiritual learning and development; the history the city provides allowed for an interactive learning experience; and exposure to Italian language and culture truly broadened my horizons and changed my perspective.

I think it will take some time for myself and others to fully notice and understand how I have changed as a result of this experience. I think it is revealed overtime, although some changes are immediately apparent. A greater confidence, being more sure of myself, and an increased sense of independence have definitely resulted from my time abroad. Certain things that I might have thought difficult, challenging, or unpleasant don’t seem to be that big of a deal after living and surviving on my own in Europe for four months. Having to take care of myself and figure out everything in a foreign country has made doing anything in my home country seems significantly easier. There are also certain conveniences and aspects of American life and culture that I have a greater appreciation for after living abroad. As much as I loved living in Italy, there are and always will be certain irreplaceable comforts of the U.S. to which I am glad to return…real showers, technology, no swarms of tourists…to name a few. But it is also great to know that I can and do enjoy the unfamiliar and the challenges of living in a foreign country.

And being able to share my adventures and all I have learned on NBC’s J.Y.A. has made my experience even more meaningful. It’s been great to keep my family and friends posted on my travels via the Internet, but it’s also great to know that I have been impacting people I don’t know and that I may help other students make the decision to study abroad. I hope others can learn from my experiences and that they take my advice when making this life-changing decision. And if you think it might be right for you—go to Rome! I don’t think you could possibly regret spending a semester or a year in the Eternal City!

Again, I’d like to say thanks to all of you who have been watching and following my journey. Herein my journey ends, and it’s the time for your’s to begin!

If you have a question or comment, please don’t hesitate to post a comment or shoot me an email. I’m happy to help out and will be sure to get back to you! Thank you and goodbye!

Fortunately, my school provided a session prior to our departure to address the issues of reverse culture shock and readjustment. So I had heard about these as well as received a packet of information on what to expect and how to deal with returning from studying abroad. It can be difficult to return to US culture and to friends and family who have not been abroad and cannot understand what you’ve experienced. It can also be frustrating when you feel different and know that you have changed as a result of your experience abroad, yet your family and friends do not recognize or understand this change.

It’s the end of my first week back in the good ole US of A, and looking back at this information I was given, I am trying to see how much of it has been true for me. At first, I was really excited to be back home and for the Christmas season. I think having the holidays here has helped to ease me back into my old life slowly, since there is a good deal of excitement surrounding this time of year.

As the week has progressed, though, I have longed for the excitement and challenges of everyday life abroad. And I miss having people around who have been through this experience with me. It’s so difficult to answer that question that everyone asks when you see them for the first time after being abroad: “So, how was it?!” How do you put into a simple sentence all the feelings and experiences that you had while abroad? “Amazing” and “Really fun” just don’t seem to cut it; but I use them anyways to dismiss the question.

I feel like if you really want to know what it was like, you just have to study abroad yourself. I think that’s the best any of us can say—to truly know, you have to have gone through it. So, my advice? Go through it! Study abroad! Gain an understanding of what this experience is like and how it can change you for the better. I always knew studying abroad would be fun, but how much I would learn and change I didn’t expect. It really was the most amazing time of my life. But don’t take my word for it. Go see for yourself.

It’s good to be back, but now I have to face the challenge of unpacking and reorganizing my life here in the States. Right now my room has piles of clothes, gifts, paperwork, shoes, etc. all over the floor. I think I might injure myself if I try to cross it. I guess I should probably get to work. I’d kind of rather sleep, though; or go talk with my family. Ugh—and I thought packing was bad. Unpacking is no picnic either! I’ll write again when I finish unburying my floor!

Unfortunately I didn’t have my first taste of the most delicious gelato in Italy until my second to last day there! But I wasted no time. Together with my sister, we tried 10 different flavors in two days. And every single one of them was unbelievable! I think honey, grapefruit, and stracciatella were my favorites.

I was so sad to have to depart with this place after just two days! Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t discover it until late, though. Otherwise, all my money would have easily gone to feed my gelato addiction at San Crispino. Too bad.

So, with some uncorked VinSanto (a Tuscan dessert wine) and biscotti, we began the long process of packing, organizing, and cleaning out the room that had been my home for the past 3 ½ months. To add to the chore of packing, we had to document everything I’d bought with an estimated value in order to be prepared to fill out the U.S. Customs form on the return flight. Don’t forget to do this when you study abroad! It makes things a lot easier when you’re tired after 9 hours on a plane and the flight attendant hands you the Customs form. After a bit of packing, Heather and I both passed out on the bed, our bodies crookedly and strategically placed around the luggage still on my bed.

I woke up a couple of hours later, finished packing, organized trash piles and such, and then laid down for another hour before we had to get up again. We woke up with less than an hour until the airport shuttle was coming, which is what we had planned to do since we just had to get dressed and take the luggage downstairs. My roommate, however, had planned to get up a couple of hours before departure and well, she was still asleep. After waking her, some hustling, and a few trips down the tiny apartment elevator with all the luggage, we made it outside and into the waiting shuttle.

Then our never-ending day of traveling commenced. AND about 22 hours later, I finally was walking into my back door at my Texas home!

Anyways, in addition to taking my sister around Rome, I had finals this week. I had already taken my Italian finals in September and October, which meant I only had to write two final papers for English class and take a final exam in Theology. It was a bit of a stressful week with everything I had going on, but I made it through. We even squeezed in a trip to the Opera Ballet at the National Theatre. It was gorgeous and the music was amazing! Definitely recommend seeing an opera or play if you come to Italy!

The other thing I liked was that because my sister was here, I took her to all my favorite restaurants in Rome, which was a great culinary send-off my final week there! She of course agreed that the food here is phenomenal! And she couldn’t believe how much food my host mom forces down us! She said she’d be sick if she ate that way every night. Now she understands what I’d been talking about. The food is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but the portions and number of courses are out of control! It’s not this way with all the host families, I just got the host mom that’s trying to plump us up! I will definitely miss her cooking, but I will be glad to be able to eat more reasonable portions back home.

Well I was so glad my sister was able to visit me and share this wonderful experience of being in Italy. Venice was her favorite place too! It was cool that she got to see three great Italian cities, and she was glad to have an insider’s tour of Rome. I think that’s one of the best things while you’re studying abroad—to have your family visit so you can show them around the city and/or country you’ve come to know in your months abroad. Playing tour guide can be a lot of fun, and it shows your family just how much you’ve learned and how valuable this experience has been for you. I can’t believe how well I’ve gotten to know Rome! It’s like a second home to me. I hope to return to live there someday. In fact, I know I will. It’s a part of me now, and I will greatly miss Rome—even with all its craziness!

I went to take the bags and camera from my sister and told her “Your turn” as I tried to brush the pigeon feathers and residue off my fleece jacket. I had just as much fun watching my sister get attacked and catching it all on video. I was laughing so hard sometimes, I couldn’t keep the camcorder still! Especially when she started freaking out when they were pecking her hands and asked me “How did you feed them?” I was like, “Just put your hand out! Flat—like this.” I showed her. “No, I know! But it hurts!” She replied. “Oh—I had gloves on,” I realized what she meant. After being thoroughly mobbed by pigeons and trying her hand at catching some too, my sister threw her final handful of corn—at me. That was fun. A brief swarm of pigeons in my direction. Then we walked out of the center of St. Mark’s square with what dignity we could to the sidewalk where we attempted to clean up some. Even as we walked away, my sister and I each had a pigeon friend on our arms; they stayed until they finally got the memo that we were out of food. Then they departed. As we cleaned ourselves off with napkins and Wet-Ones, we realized that maybe we should have eaten lunch before feeding the pigeons.

We wandered around in the rain (this is pre umbrella purchase) to find a coffee bar, which we did. The owner was very rude although he let us have our espresso for free because he didn’t want to break my 20 Euro. Yeah—if you ever go to Italy, try to carry nothing larger than 5 Euro bills because Italians really hate to give change! Once when I bought a cappuccino and pastry at the Snack Bar by my school, totaling 1.60 Euro, I tried to pay with a 10 Euro bill. The cashier woman looked in my change purse, pointed, and made me scrounge up all my 50, 20, and 5 cent pieces to give her for the payment rather than just giving me some change (which she had plenty of in that open cash register). And if you ever have one of those dreaded 50 or even worse 100 Euro bills, well you’ll find yourself cringing and saying “Mi dispiace” (I’m sorry) all over the place when you see the glares you get when you try to pay for something under 10 Euro.

Anyways, enough of the tangent. After the angry coffee bar man encounter, we tried to find our way back to the bus stop a different way than we came. Big mistake. There is pretty much only one road to any where in Venice. Unlike Rome where you can wander through millions of crooked little alleyways and get completely lost but then still end up where you’re trying to go, in Venice you get a lot of dead ends, bridges, and canals. We were walking along this one canal—in the ever-strengthening rain—that looked like it would hook back up with the bus stop piazza, when a couple passed us on the way telling us that it dead ends. So, we turned around and trudged back the way we came, getting more and more wet.

The bus took us to La Piazza di San Marco, where we ducked inside another, more friendly (albeit more expensive) coffee bar for snacks and warmth. Then we bought an umbrella and headed into St. Mark’s church. The church was gorgeous and covered in beautiful mosaics. Although entrance into the church was technically free, it cost a couple of Euros here and there to see any of the side things (the treasury, the artwork behind the altar up-close, the upstairs). We decided to go upstairs, where we could walk around an indoor balcony circling the church and providing close views of the ceiling mosaics as well as go outside on the balcony with the four horse statues (although the real ones were indoors to save them from the elements and the ones outside were just replicas). After looking out onto the square from our lofty position, we descended into the now rain-free square to check it out. And then we fed the pigeons (see “The Birds” blog for this tale).

Still laughing from our pigeon adventures, we window-shopped at all the cute gift shops as we wandered looking for a place to grab lunch. We found a cute place, and although it was a little expensive, decided to go for it anyways since that would mean they would probably have a nice bathroom and the place would be heated. It felt sooo nice to defrost in the warm restaurant; we had a strategically placed table, right under the heat vent. After cleaning up in the bathroom from our pigeon experience, we ordered some pasta, and enjoyed a tasty final meal in Venice! I got delicious cheese gnocchi and my sister got a hearty pasta bean soup. We didn’t want to head back into the cold, but we bundled ourselves in our jackets and scarves and traipsed outside.

The afternoon was all about jewelry and glass shopping! We found a shopping area (away from the pricey St. Mark’s square shops) and went door to door looking at all sorts of Murano glass products, which were gorgeous! A few purchases and a couple hundred Euro later, we gathered our bags of gifts (for others and ourselves, naturally!), and started to walk towards our hotel, hoping we’d be able to easily navigate the way. It took us a lot less time than we thought to find our way back, which was fortunate because it allowed us some resting and defrosting time in the hotel bar and lounge. We grabbed some free tea and cookies, and then we collapsed in two comfy chairs in the bar. It felt great to just sit and be warm. We were exhausted and killed the next hour in the hotel until we finally asked for our luggage and then proceeded to the dock to catch the waterbus to the train station. As we walked up the stairs from the water, we said our goodbyes to Venezia, promising to return to the beautiful city again, together, someday.

We arrived at the train station, right on the water, and bought some tickets for the water-bus. That’s what struck me the most. The no cars, no motorized vehicles thing was absolutely amazing. Just boats, waterbuses, water-taxis to get around the city on the canals. So we hopped on the public transportation of Venice aka a boat, and took it a few stops down to the Ca d’Oro dock, which was conveniently just a couple of blocks from our hotel. We rolled our little suitcases down the non-crowded streets to discover we had booked a room in the cutest hotel in Venice! My sister and I fell in love with it! It just had the cutest décor inside, with a little lounge, bar, tea room, and breakfast room. They had complimentary afternoon tea, coffee, and sweet biscuits/ snacks. And breakfast was included in the morning, which was delicious. It was rather reasonably priced as well, so if you ever need a hotel recommendation for Venice, just ask me!

Anyways, after settling in and defrosting a bit, we explored the hotel and had some tea and coffee in the tea room. Then we decided to just wander from the hotel and see what we found, with the hope of grabbing a bite to eat somewhere. In the area closest to the hotel, there were some touristy places and restaurants open and people about, but as we walked further away, it was like a ghost town! There were no signs of life—just quiet, deserted streets. It was so weird and different to be somewhere like that in Italy! But we just kept wandering, crossing back and forth over the random bridges everywhere. And when we thought we were totally lost, we decided to try to head back from where we came, and surprisingly somehow we made it all the way back to our hotel without even breaking out a map! We impressed ourselves.

In our wandering, we managed to pass through the square of the church of Sts. John and Paul, which is one of the major churches in Venice. We also found a little gift shop where we bought some inexpensive glass ink pens (they were quite reasonable because it was a shop away from the real touristy areas). We also stopped by a snack bar for some mixed bruschetta before heading back to the hotel. After mass at the Ss. Apostoli church (right next to our hotel), we went in search for dinner. We stumbled upon a place just a half a block away down a tiny alley that turned out to be a pretty good dinner. I tried some gnocchi and my sister got a seafood pasta dish. We topped it off with a really good white ice cream cake.

After dinner, we caught another waterbus and took it to the St. Mark’s stop. After seeing the popular square, we found our way to the famous Harry’s Bar, where the Bellini cocktail was invented in 1948. Naturally, we both tried these pricy peach champagne concoctions which were delicious. We slowly sipped our Bellini since we could only afford to enjoy one a piece! Then we returned to the cold streets to window shop in the dark at all the gorgeous glass and jewelry stores lining St. Mark’s square. After we were sufficiently tired and cold, we took the longest waterbus ride of our lives when we got on the bus going the wrong direction aka the scenic route back to our hotel stop. Finally we arrived back, exhausted and cold, and were glad to have our cute, warm hotel to retreat to and rest before another long day in Venezia!

As we hiked up the long and winding staircases, there were windows along the way on the side of the cathedral of different shapes and sizes that provided awesome views of the city and great pictures (when we could get the lighting right and manage to snap a shot between the lines of people going up and down). And then, at the top of the dome, there was an amazing view of the city of Florence! We braved the cold and wind at the top for a few minutes to take in the view and get some pictures. Then we descended those 463 stairs back to ground level.

As if we hadn’t had enough climbing, my sister dragged me up a never-ending hill of inclines and stairs to the Piazzale Michelangelo for another great view of the city. We grabbed some snacks at a coffee bar and then sat on the steps of the piazza to take in the sunset over the city. On our way back to the city, we crossed the Ponte Vecchio, which is the bridge that was the only one spared in Florence during WWII because Hitler thought it was too beautiful to destroy. We watched the bridge change colors as we approached it, walking along the river. The Ponte Vecchio is lit with lights from the sides of the river that go through a changing sequence all throughout the evening—the purple and red were my favorite colors of it!

We also stopped in the Uffizi to check out some amazing paintings and sculptures by artists such as DaVinci (they had a special exhibition on his art and scientific work), Caravaggio, Tiziano, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Unfortunately we were a little pressed for time because of the early closing hour, but we could have wandered around that place for hours. The exhibition on DaVinci was especially amazing—with all sorts of information on screens and computers as well as replicas of his experiments and breakdowns of his artwork and processes. There was a lot of interesting and beautiful pieces of art; I even bought a couple of prints in the gift shop to take home with me!

After the art museum, we crossed back over the river to search for dinner. After getting a little lost down some side streets with no signs of life, we stumbled upon a trattoria tucked away in an alley. The prices and food looked good, so we took a seat. Turns out we picked a great place because by the time we left, there was a line out the door for tables at the restaurant. Not to mention the food, and especially desserts, were delicious!

With full stomachs, we strolled back to the river, one bridge over from the Ponte Vecchio. It was a bridge my dad and I had been on during my earlier trip to Florence in the semester. I remembered how you can climb over the sides of the bridge and sit out on one of the four triangular cement ledges that jut off the bridge. So my sister and I climbed onto one of these to sit and chat while watching the Ponte Vecchio change colors in the cold, dark night.

It was a beautiful night, and after we’d had enough of the cold, we decided to slowly wander back towards our hotel. Our walk back was slightly eventful as we made our way down the streets lit with Christmas lights. In the Piazza della Republica we caught a musical group performing and a spray paint street artist putting on shows for the crowd. We stopped for a little to watch both. Later we were chased down a street by a crazy homeless man with a broom, who almost knocked down another woman passing by on a bike. There were some colorful characters there in Florence. We made our way back to the hotel eventually and were glad to be in the warm indoors! After learning from a sign in the elevator that there was a national train strike scheduled for the next day, we went to bed wandering if this would indeed be our last night in Florence or if we wouldn’t make it to Venice as we had planned.

We arrived late Friday evening only to find there was a public transportation strike in Florence as well! Avoiding the mile-long taxi stand line at the train station, we decided to walk a couple blocks away to try to find one. Fortunately we didn’t have to walk too far before I spotted one dropping off someone at a restaurant in an alleyway. We flagged him down, and he took us to our hotel. After dropping off our luggage and settling in a bit, we needed some nourishment before turning in for the night. So we headed back into the cold (much colder north in Tuscany than the warm winter weather of Rome) to find a restaurant.

We managed to find a trattoria not too far away that was actually a vegetarian Italian restaurant (fortunate for me!). It had some interesting and tasty dishes—I tried a risotto dish and a cheese crepe, and my sister tried some pasta in vodka sauce. After finishing with some tiramisu, we returned to the street decorated with arches of Christmas lights to do a little exploring of Florence night life. We found a cute wine bar a little down the road and stopped in for a glass. It had a nice atmosphere and it was great to relax and catch up with my sister! However, we were quite exhausted, and my jet-lagged sister was about to collapse by the time we returned to the hotel to sleep late that night.

I’ve been asking my professors and people I’ve met who live here if they’ve ever been in Vatican City, and if so, how. And I got lucky when I recently asked my English teacher if she’d ever been in the Vatican, and she said that she actually had gone on a tour a couple of weeks ago that took her through more of the Vatican than she’d ever seen before. I immediately asked for details.

Apparently, there’s a recently opened archeological tour of a necropolis (city of the dead/ burial site), and that in going to the sites on the tour, you get to walk through a good portion of the secretive Vatican City. So, my professor emailed me the information about how to make a reservation, and I’ll hopefully be embarking on this tour with my sister in early December! I can’t wait!

Btw, a funny little fact about the Vatican…it has its own bank, and the bank’s ATMs are the only in the world where Latin is a language option for when you make a transaction!

In my English class Tuesday, it was funny because we visited three churches in Trastevere, and b/c most of the students are in the Papacy class as well, we were all on the look out for last minute findings of contributions of our popes. When we entered a church, we'd all look around and my classmates would be like "There's my pope's crest! He must have done something here!" or "Ooo! There's my pope's name with that Latin inscription! Yes!" Everyone was really excited to find things their popes did, and my english teacher was amused by our enthusiasm in the project. Unfortunately, my pope wasn't involved in the construction of any of those churches, so no help for me!

Well I better get back to the life of Pope Innocent X and his famiily, the Pamphili. Wish me luck!

Soon to come: pictures from my second academic excursion in Campania, south of Rome. And photos from my fall break in Dublin and Paris (I've been travelling Europe for 11 days, so I haven't been online. But, I will be catching up on blogs and photos as fast as I can!). Stay tuned!