Partially a Roman?

Ciao amici! To be quite honest, I feel very cool greeting you all in Italian, some how makes me feel significantly more Italian. I have been here for about two weeks now and I can say that I am slowly adjusting.

People often like to glamorize study abroad because 97% of it is super glamorous. You are in a foreign country, exploring, eating and learning, that is a pretty fabulous life if you ask me! But there are also the other experiences that factor into studying abroad. Experiences such as homesickness, language trial and error and physically and mentally adjusting, that not so many people talk about. Now to be clear I am not at all a “debbie downer”, I’m just trying to embrace all of the study abroad experience and part of that are the challenges. Here are some lessons/personal remedies I have learned over the past two weeks:

1) Homesickness is real and normal! I am 21 years old and I miss my mom and my dog and I am not at all afraid to admit that. Well okay, at first I was embarrassed to admit that but feeling this way is normal. I had to put it into perspective. I just moved to a brand new country for four months, naturally I will miss things and people.

2) You will have several language fails. We were in Campania this weekend and a kind waiter came to take my dish away and I accidentally said “basta” which is the equivalent of saying “enough already!” but what I really meant to say was “finito”.  Major face palm moment, but that is a part of learning a new language! All the Italians I have interacted with are very willing to help me and correct my awful Italian and I am very grateful. Those language fails will be engrained in your brain, often times from deep embarrassment, but that is totally okay!

3) You will have moments that will make you say “Momma I made it!”. There have been moments in the last two weeks that have made me want to strike the iconic Rocky pose because I felt that I have accomplished a big feat. Okay, in reality these moments are actually quite minuscule but I felt like a champ. Moments such as tackling the bus system kind of on my own, going grocery shopping and not getting lost, knowing how to actually get somewhere and knowing what store to get something at. These are very small moments but I did in fact run (metaphorically) back to JFRC and text my Mom. I’m still very proud.

Till next time my friends! Ciao!

-Lindsay