I'm gonna miss it here

So, I have less than a month left here and it's really depressing. This has been such an amazing experience and I don't want it to end. I don't want to leave Italy. And I don't want to have to go back to the US and adjust to my old life. I just want to keep my current life going. I'm so serious about coming back here later in life to actually live. There are things I love and things I hate in both the US and in Italy, but Italy has less things I dislike and more things I love. I feel so happy here and I feel like it's just a nice fit. Maybe I credit the country too much, maybe just the people I know here make the experience even better. Tut even though I'm sure they are part of the reason I'm so happy here, I still know that I love Italy itself. Meh.

So, we are reaching the end and have realized how little we have actually done. Like yea, I've been to some amazing countries, but I haven't done much in Italy. I've seen all the major tourist hotspots, but I wanna know here more intimately than that. We have had some amazing times here--like Carnivale in Venice, but I still feel like I haven't gotten as much out of this experience as I could have. Maybe I just want everything. Cos I really have gotten a lot out of all of this, but I want more. I'm so selfish. Well, yesterday we went to Tivoli cos my later class was canceled. We could have spent two days there, but instead only spend like 4 or 5 hours. So he had to decide one thing to do--so we chose Hadrian's Villa. It was so beautiful. I wish we had walked around the town more. And I'm so bummed I didn't take any pictures of the town, cos it is really pretty. Man, I'm gonna miss how easy it is to find beauty here. I mean, I miss the beauty of Santa Cruz too. I miss the beaches and the redwoods, but the beauty here is different....it's not just trees and beaches, it is also the buildings and what not. Obviously, Italy is an older country than the US and so buildings and what not are older, and that's a large part of its major appeal. Little towns still live in many ways, the same as they did centuries ago. Each region of Italy has its own dialect that is totally incomprehensible to all other regions. How cool is that? Like, in Italian andiamo is "let's go", in Rome (Lazio region) it's "namo", and we learned two others yesterday, but I have forgotten. But they were so completely different. It is gonna be so hard when I don't get to live in a place so rich in culture and without this kind of beauty so often.

Well, here are some pictures from by favorite part of the villa in Tivoli:




-Sarah