If that doesn’t sound corny, I don’t know what does.
Anywho...I’m heading back to Granada after spending 11 days
traveling. I did a lot in the last week: we went to Barcelona, then on to Rome,
Florence, Siena, Pisa, Cinque Terre, Venice and are ending the trip in Bologna.
It was a jam-packed week and I’m kind of ready to get back to life in Granada.
The other weird thing is that my semester is more than halfway over now. THAT
is nuts. I don’t know where the time has gone!!
I could spend this whole post talking about everything that
I’ve seen and done this week in Italy, but I’ll spare you all the details. You
can look through my Facebook pictures if you want and I’d be happy to share
some of the funnier/most ridiculous stories, but I’m going to use this post to
talk about the corny. The feelings part,
if you will. Don’t worry-I’ll give you some of the highlights of my Italy trip
as well, if you care to read about them at the end of this post.
So for now, try to stick with me and I’m going to hope this
doesn’t become a jumbled stream-of-consciousness, get-it-all-out kind of post.
Fingers crossed.
When people talk to you about studying abroad, they pick out
the best parts to tell you-the cool places they visited, the famous landmarks
they saw, that time they went out to the 6 story club and met up with all these
awesome college kids from Holland, or how they are coming back to the States “like
totally more culturally aware and stuff.” Here’s the single most important
thing I have learned so far: I really, truly appreciate everything I have at
home a lot more. Sure, I like having hot showers that last as long as I want
and I miss Panera Bread or my Venti coffee, but it’s not just the American
lifestyle conveniences I miss. I’m close to my family and I realized just how
much I miss them without being able to see them for almost 5 months. I miss
snuggling up with my best friends and watching a movie in the Sigma Kappa
basement or giggling about stupid things until it’s way too late. I miss seeing
my puppy when I come home from school and spending hours cuddling with him. I
miss being able to call or text my mom whenever I want. I miss long walks
talking about everything under the sun with my dad.
There are a million more things I could list off. But
despite that long list, not an ounce of me regrets doing this semester abroad.
And that contradiction is exactly why most people who study abroad hold back
and don’t tell you about the things that weren’t so easy about studying
abroad-we are afraid you won’t understand that even though things weren’t
always easy or always fun, we still don’t regret our semester abroad and we
don’t want you to think we didn’t have a good experience.
I’m so incredibly blessed to be able to have this
opportunity to travel to all sorts of amazing places and meet cool people and
practice another language. So many people are not as fortunate, so it just
feels wrong to complain about anything or list any negatives about
studying abroad. Nothing is perfect though, so why would anyone assume the same
about living in a foreign country for 5 months? I was completely disillusioned
coming to Spain and honestly thought I wouldn’t feel homesick at all. When
people said they thought that 5 months was a really long time, I never thought
it seemed that bad. It’s one of those situations where I’m so, so happy to be
here and be experiencing it all but when May 24th rolls around, I’ll
be thrilled to see my family and friends again.
I don’t know if anyone will be able to completely understand
what I’m trying to say here, but if anything, I’ll be able to remember for
myself that it wasn’t all easy and that I did, in fact, learn A LOT from this
experience. That alone makes it all worth it.
And that’s about all I wanted to say about that.
SO. On a slightly more upbeat note, here are 10 highlights
from my Italy trip:
1. Seeing friends again! Special shout out to Nyssa, who
played tour guide for us in Rome! Our little foursome-Me, Paige, Hope, and
Elissa made an awesome travel group.
2. THE FOOD. I’ve got a lot of walking to do to burn off all
of the Italian food I ate this week. Seriously, friends...it’s obnoxious. The
gelato and pasta were just to die for! I just couldn’t help myself. When in
Rome, I suppose!
3. Okay, not exactly a highlight but it did make for
some stories was the Italian transportation systems. Basically, they kind of
suck. We were fined on the train for not stamping our tickets, we had a 2 hour
delay on one of our trains (almost leaving us stuck in a remote town in Cinque
Terre for the night!), and we are just all around over their methods of
transportation. I’ll take my walking everywhere in Granada over buses/trains/water
taxis ANY day.
4. Seeing the panoramic view of Florence from the top of the
bell tower next to the Duomo (it was closed for Easter, so we couldn’t go up in
it). I think Florence was my favorite city in Italy, and it was amazing to see
a view of the entire city from the top.
5. “If they can’t FIND me, they can’t FINE me” ...and other
one-liners from our week together. A lot of inside jokes developed during this
trip. J
6. Our wine tasting class in Florence. Happy to say I have
“graduated” from the Tuscan Wine school and am now an expert in wine tasting.
(But don’t ask me any questions about it because the wine got to my head a
little and I kind of forgot most of what we learned.)
7. The little town of Siena, and how absolutely picturesque
everything was there.
8. Taking those tacky tourist pictures holding up the
Leaning Tower of Pisa.
9. Attending Mass in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice for
Easter. I wish I could have been with family, but mass in the second most
visited church in Italy is a pretty good alternative.
10. Throwing a coin into the Trevi Fountain, because it
means I’ll come back to Rome someday. I really hope that’s true...Italy is an
amazing place and definitely somewhere I want to come back to later in life.
I’m hoping Venice hasn’t sunk by then, because it owes me a gondola ride!
Ok, so before I end this post, I have one last cool story to share with you, and picture to go along with it. Many years ago, my dad backpacked through Europe with a friend, visiting places like Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. One of his stops was to Florence, where he happened upon a cool-looking horse statue in a Piazza and snapped a photo of it. Upon returning to the States, he showed his parents the photos from the trip and my Grandpa immediately ran and got his photos out from when he was in Italy after WWII. Coincidentally, he had the SAME photo of the same, not-very-famous, horse statue. I'm happy to say I am the third generation Rysiewicz to take a photo of this statue in Florence. Pretty cool, I think!
xo
Kira
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