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Ciao!
In just a few hours I’ll catch a plane from DC to Heathrow and another one from heathrow to Milan-Linate. Then, I’ll ride a shuttle bus from Linate to Central Milan and then a train to Parma. Then I’ll have to figure out how to get from Parma to Colorno by bus.
Hooboy.
The last couple of days have been a little bit intense. Which is to say that I’ve been a panicky stress monkey freaking out over packing and goodbyes, but now that I’ve jammed as many shoes as possible into my suitcases (I think that the grand total was seven pairs, but it includes rain boots and running shoes) and printed my boarding passes, I’m feeling a little better.
It’s strange to finally be leaving, but great too. In a way, I feel as though I’ve been leading up to this moment ever since the day last summer when I told myself that I wasn’t going to chicken out on my UniSG application this time. But that promise took weeks and months of work to realize and, once accepted, required more planning than I could have anticipated.
For weeks, people have been asking me whether or not I’m excited about Italy. And I know that they want for me to say yes, I am so totally excited, but if I said that I would be lying. Doing this has forced me to put myself so far outside of my comfort zone that I haven’t felt excited so much as relieved as the pieces of the puzzle have come together. I haven’t known how to feel excited amidst moving and leaving friends and Fitz and Zach and my family. I can’t count the number of times that I have thought, “This would be so much simpler had I decided to go to school in Pittsburgh or New York instead.”
Only now, with my stomach still churning, looking at my home address in Italy on Google Earth with my dad, can I finally start to detect a glimmer of excitement under the stress.
Wish me luck!
