Reflection

I was walking to a friend's apartment the other night, taking the same route I have taken about a thousand times, and just as I was in the middle of the Uffizi's Piazza it hit me. I was in Italy and felt entirely at home and oriented in my new city. Two months before that night, the first night I had ever walked around Florence I walked through that exact same Piazza and I remember feeling as if my world had flipped upside down. I couldn't have told you up from down or left from right that night, in fact, I got lost that night as I remember. But that night, two months after arriving in Florence, everything was in place. I was well oriented and I could tell anyone who asked directions to the major points in Florence. I knew the Duomo was North of me just down the street on the left and that the Ponte Vecchio was just down the street to the right, I could go on but I won't, you get the point. But, most importantly I felt at home. I just realized in that moment I had a second place in the world I can call home.
For the past month I have been growing a lot more comfortable navigating the winding confusing streets of Florence and feeling feeling that my life before Italy is just a faint memory of someone else. On that brief five minute walk, everything just sank in, before Italy I was, in many ways, someone else. I haven't done a complete 180 on myself, but the experiences I have had in Italy have already changed me. I am beginning to see the world from and different perspective (and culture), I have grown quite a bit personally, and the day-to-day tasks of living in Italy have brought out more of my personality that I don't always express (including strengths and weaknesses.) I am still very much the person I was before I came to Italy, but I feel like I have improved myself. I still haven't entirely figured myself out, but really who does that in their teens or early 20's, most people aren't even figured out in their middle age so I feel okay about that.
As I continued walking, I began thinking about how quickly life can change and how subtly life can change you. In just two months I feel like a different person, and in reality I am. Then I realized I am more of the person I have always seen myself as becoming and I am on the right track to really being that person. But how did that happen? Wasn't I always waiting for it to happen someday? Yes, I had been waiting for it to just happen, expecting some major life event to make it happen, that one morning I would wake up and just be the person I wanted to be. Life doesn't work like that, I made it happen. I didn't just sit back and let life happen around me, I took the initiative and made it happen. I am living out my dream of studying abroad in Italy and becoming who I want to be all on my own, and it all started the day I walked into the study abroad office on campus and said "I want to study abroad, but I'm not sure where." Saying those words out loud to strangers made it real, and before I knew it 10 minutes later I was walking out of the office with about 20 brochures on 3 different countries and I had a conversation with a stranger about dutch people. That short statement started my journey. (By the way thanks Tasha for nagging me about wanting to study abroad, but never actually taking the time to go ask about it.) Studying in another country wasn't just going to fall into my lap my any means, I had to take the initiative to make it happen. Boy was it a lot of work to get here too, mostly paperwork. After being in Italy, I realized that me growing into the person I want to be wasn't just going to happen either, I had to take the initiative to make it happen. I had to step outside my comfort zone, and luckily being in a foreign country where I didn't know anyone made it quite easy to do that. I think I lived constantly outside of my comfort zone for the first month I was here. It wasn't going to be one big sudden transformation, but it was going to be a very gradual one. Even if when you realize it's happened it seems to hit you on the head, it didn't it had been happening for quite some time, it was just never realized. It can start with saying yes to an invitation from a potential new friend, or trying a new food, or in my case getting on an airplane for the first time in my life alone. I went half-way across the world by myself at 19 to live with strangers in a country where I couldn't speak the language. Doing all of that has made me more independent and self-confident, not to mention outgoing.
It has only been two months and I already feel like a such a different person. I can barely remember my lifestyle before I got to Italy, and what people speaking English sounds like. I will be curious to see how home feels when I return, but for now I am enjoying my time in the relaxed culture Italy has to offer me.