Goodbye is a 7-letter word

It's been well over a week since I stumbled out of the Buffalo airport at 1:30 in the morning in my thigh high boots and fox fur collar, and every since then I'm I've been waiting to finish this blog, waiting for something extremely profound to strike me on the merits of cross continental travel so I can polish it up all shiny and publish it here for all to read.

But my thought panning has produced no gems so far, and the only thing I've come to realise in hindsight is this: Jet lag plus culture shock is a potent cocktail of confusion, one best sipped slowly.

I could go on for hours and hours about all the (unwelcome) differences I've found between the States and Italy so far, but I'll spare you because if you're reading this you either get to hear them all in person at some point, or you already know all of them.

I think the real root of this culture shock is the fact that I'm resolved to maintain as many of my Italian habits as possible upon my return, whereas immediately upon my arrival in Italy I gleefully and shamelessly tried to shed my American mannerisms (they weren't fooled, but it's the effort that counts).

Yet, it's not really that hard for me to keep my suedo-European ways here. I wasn't exactly conventionally American to begin with. And yes, I do realise that my going to the DMV in three inch heels is probably not something I would have done before, but it's just habit on my part now. If I had wanted to be super Italian I wouldn't have been at the DMV at all, and would've instead been biking around in snake-skin stilettos while smoking a cigarette at the same time.

Now that is quintessentially Italian.

The hardest thing about leaving Florence wasn't even leaving Florence. I know the city will still be there, it's been there for centuries. It will probably still be there for centuries after I kick the bucket. I can always go back.

The hardest thing to leave was the people. Carissa, Amanda, Nicole, Anto, Megan, Rachel, Gen, Linzy, Tess, Ayrn, and especially Kara and Arielle who really were like my family over there.

But rather than focus on the things I have had to leave, I'm trying to focus on the things I have taken back with me. The things I can't eat or wear.

Thousands of students study abroad every year, and I'm not naive enough to think that I'm the only one with any new perspectives skewing my vision. They say that when people study abroad they change. This is true, but there's no rule as to how that change will manifest itself. Maybe it's obvious, maybe it's so subtle no one notices it's there. But it's there, believe me.

Though I've written and immeasurable amount of words about being abroad, I've never been able to describe it in a manner that satisfies me. I could say what I do, but I have a hard time describing what it is. I've tried here and there, but all and all I've never felt I've done the topic justice. Perhaps that's the way it's supposed to be.

In a lot of ways, I've never been less certain about life than I am right now. And Florence is entirely to blame. Normally, this would be grounds for a panic attack. But surprisingly, I'm good. I've never been better. What it is that's come over me, I couldn't tell you. Though even if I could, I wouldn't want to. All you need to know is that I'm reached a rebirth.

A renaissance.

Getting out of Buffalo as fast as humanly possible was my greatest motivation in journeying to Florence. So for starting with that, I got a whole lot more than I had expected. And strangely enough, that motivation is even stronger in me now than before I left. Twenty years is a long time to stay in one place, and four months in another place only served to remind me how many other places are waiting to be seen. I won't be the first to see them, just as I wasn't the first to fall in love with Florence, but traveling is as much an odyssey for the soul as it is for the body, and that is never the same.

I don't know when I will be back to Florence. For now, it has done for me all it can do. But I do know with absolute certainty that I will be back. As much as I took with me, I also left part of myself behind. My last night in Florence, we ascended to Piazza Michlangelo and silently stared at our nocturnal city, our home. I don't know how long we were there, but as we walked down, we saw this on the wall.



Though we had said nothing, this seemed to say it all. And still does.

So with that, farewell for now, beautiful Florence, bella Firenze!

This is not the end.