Yesterday it was exactly 6 months that I am here. Which means that there are only 4 months left. I don't really know how to feel about it.
On one side I just can't wait to see all my friends again, hug my parents, walk around my town that I learned to know so well during my whole life, pet my cats, eat my grandma's food, feel really italian in my home land again. Which is weird because I've never been proud of being italian, and still there are a lot of things about Italy that I don't miss at all.
On the other side, it just makes me cry the idea that I will have to say goodbye. Goodbye to Idaho. Goodbye to my friends and to the best people I've met here, and most of them are exchange students too so it will be even harder to meet each others again. I have to say goodbye to my amazing host family and the home I found here. I have to say goodbye to America, with all its patriotism, and its junk food, and its lovely strangers who always smile and greet you with an "how are you doing?". I have to say goodbye to my american schools, the Hillcrest Knights, the football games and the choir concerts and the drama shows, the lunches in the cafeteria, the lockers, the US History classes, the gym, the ipads in the Anatomy classroom, the bathroom always cleaned, the library always full of people and the computers everywhere.
In these 6 months I learned to love Idaho more than my own home town. Sometimes I miss the thrill of the first weeks, when everything was new and I could still smell the particular smell this house has, and that sometimes I can still catch when I get out of the shower and I stand still for a few seconds, because that smell reminds me of how I also felt when I first arrived here. It seems so far away now, because everything was so different, I was so different. And sometimes I think about that first camping night that I had, sleeping under the stars, having cool conversations, eating marshmallows in front of the campfire, when I used a shotgun for the first time, when I rode a fourwheeler. Thinking about all those incredible moments makes me feel full. Full of experiences, full of learning, full of memories, full of love for the people that I met here. Full of things I would have never found at home in Italy, things that changed me forever and that I will always keep with me everywhere I will go from now on. Because I will always think about this year, and probably cry many times, because I will want to go back to these moments. And it's not gonna last for a few months, when I go back home. I know that it's gonna be something that I will deal with forever. Even when my life will go on, I will go to university, I will get a job, I will have a family of my own and children and someone to hold me during the sleepless nights; even in those moments there will always be a part of myself, a very important part, that will recall all these moments and emotions and will shed some tears wishing I could go back in time.
Because I know, deep inside me, that the people I met here and changed my life forever, will always be with me. They will always be part of my life, it doesn't matter how far away we will be. I will always want to come back here every now and then and feel 17 and crazy again.
"Exchange is not only a year of your life, it's your life in one year", and exchange is not only now, exchange is forever.
