Well it’s my last day in Rome… I took my last exam, donated
extra clothes and the coat I bought in Sicily at school, cleaned the apartment,
and went out to one last dinner with my roommates.
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| As I stand victorious at the top of the stairs I wheezed up every day... until I found a larger set of stairs with a shorter route! |
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| My delicious last meal in Rome: Armatriciana - although I wasn't a huge fan of the pig jowl... |
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| Mmmm raspberry and lemon sorbet/gelato! |
We walked to the Trevi
Fountain after dinner, but I didn’t throw a coin in because it’s still under
construction and I feel like that’s cheating – so next time I’m in Rome…
Then I
wandered over to the Colosesum and sat for a while just appreciating and
reflecting on the past semester.
I decided to trace the steps I took my first
night in Rome, so I walked from the Colosseum to the Roman Forum,
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| The white speckles are birds - they may drive me crazy during the day, but they were pretty at night! |
then to the
Wedding Cake Building that I will never learn the actual name of and Piazza
Venezia,
then the HUGE obelisk right off of Via del Corso,
then the Pantheon,
then the elephant statue in front of the Santa Maria Minerva church,
and then
finally the Cat Sanctuary at Largo Argentina.
I think its only half hit me that I’m actually going to wake up in Rome
and go to sleep in the States tomorrow.
I’m not saying I’m excited to leave, but I think I would be
a whole lot more sad about it if I wasn’t going straight to Minnesota to see my
parents and all of my relatives in Minnesota and Wisconsin on my way back to
Michigan. And then I get to see my best friend, and I cannot tell you how
excited I am - I miss her! I’m not sure when I’ll be seeing all of my other friends,
but I move into my apartment on May 26th and start work shortly after,
so it will definitely have to be after that!
This semester has been absolutely mind opening – I can’t
tell you how much I’ve even learned because it’s hard to remember what I didn’t
know before. All I can say is I have come to appreciate other cultures more
than I did before, and I have learned a lot about myself! I did not by any
means get to do everything I wanted to do (the one thing I really wanted to do
when I came here was travel to France), but I have zero regrets. I’ve seen so
many amazing places I’ve never dreamed of seeing or even thought of visiting. I
have met people from all over the world, and eaten food from all over the world
too! This was also my first semester living in my own apartment and not the
dorms, so I even learned a lot about that. Like how different people consider
dishes to be “clean.”
I’ll post a little bit more about my final thoughts on my
semester abroad once I return home and have a really good chance to reflect on
my experience. Reverse culture shock, here we come.
Observation of the
Day: We go through so many changes in our lives, and have to say goodbye to so
many things, just so the next opportunity can open itself up to us. This
year alone I have said goodbye to the house I grew up in when my parents moved
to Minnesota, then Ciao to Roma when I moved here in January, and now it’s time
to say Arrivederci to Roma for everything that’s coming next. I have a lot of
things to be looking forward to for both the summer and next fall, including my
favorite leadership camp in the world, a position on Central Premiere
Productions Eboard, and the International Breaks Chair for the Alternative
Breaks Advisory Board! This trip actually inspired me to apply for that
position as one of my choices, and I am so grateful I was offered the
opportunity!
