Paper Planes.

Tomorrow will be my last day in Idaho Falls. When I first arrived here this day seemed so far away that it almost felt impossible that it could ever come at all. Now if I look back on the day I arrived here it feels so distant and so close at the same time. It feels like yesterday, but it also feels like I've been here for my entire life. Which is partly true. It's just that I had to build up from zero a new life, and it took me 10 months. And now that I finally find myself at home, I have to leave it. I have to turn away and say goodbye to the people that standed next to me in this amazing journey. I have to say goodbye to those places that I learned to love with a true traveller's heart. I have to say goodbye to those moments that I will never get back, that I can only replay in my head over and over again and hope for more moments like those. But there won't be any for who knows how long. That's what hurts. The fear. The fear of the unknown. Uncertainty. When am I gonna come back? When will I see these people again? Not knowing when I will get the life that I build for all these months back is killing me. And what also scares me is that I don't know for sure what I will find back home. Are things going to be different, or it's gonna be me who's changed and see things in a different way? All these questions and fears and promises. This is where the hard part starts. This is where the journey begins. This is where I have to take all the things that I've learned in the past 10 months and catch my breath, hold on, because the road goes up now. This is not the end of something. It's the beginning of something bigger, harder, greater. And all the things that I've collected on my way since now, all the people that I've met, all the memories that I've made...I am not gonna leave them behind. It is not for who I leave behind. It's for who I'll always bring with me. Because "I am so grateful to have something that makes the goodbye so hard."
And I am so grateful for the luck that I've had on my journey. Because as I have already said, a journey requires a little bit of luck. In fact, if I try to think about all the coincidences and the things that had happened to me to end up right here in this exact moment I will get an headache. I truly believe that you need something that drives you in life. And you also need some skills and some knowledge. But another thing that you need is luck. It's like making a paper plane. You can be really good at folding the paper in the right shape and you can be really good at throwing it. But there's a little percentage of fortune in that. If you're lucky enough, the paper plane will fly very far, but in the end you never know where it's going to land. And we are like paper planes. We throw ourselves out into the world, skillful and hopeful, but we never know where we are going to land. Life is a big question mark and you can spend your whole time searching but you will never find all the answers. You can instead choose what fits you best. You can choose what shape of paper plane you want to become. You can try and practice. Sometimes you crash, sometimes you catch the right wind with the ground far beneath your wings. The most important thing is that you aim for what you dream of and what you believe in. So when you feel the breeze, don't think about it twice. Take off. Spread your paper wings. Hold your breath. And enjoy the flight.

20 days left.

Here I am. 20 days left and I still can't get in the mindset that soon I'll be in Italy, with my firends and family and I will leave this life that it took me 9 months to build. I will leave some of the most important people in my life, the friends from all around the world that changed me and will always mean a lot to me. When I arrived here I was sure I would have lived the best year of my life, and so it was. But I didn't only get the exchange year that I wanted, I also got the exchange year that I needed.
They always tell you that when there's love, the world gets smaller. And I've never understood what they meant until today. The fact that I met all these amazing people that come from different parts of the world, from different cultures, that grew up in different ways, and we all ended up meeting here, it's one of the greatest things that I experienced this year. In the past 9 months I had the opportunity to open my mind and my heart to people and places, I learned and I changed so much that when I think about the shy girl who arrived in Idaho Falls 9 months ago, I almost can't indentify myself with her. I gained a family and a home millions of miles away from where I lived my whole life. Leaving Italy to go on an exchange was the best choice I've ever made in my life, and I will always be grateful to that shy little girl for taking that decision. I will always be proud of that girl for not letting fear overcome her and stop her from going on the best adventure of her life. And now that girl is someone better. Someone braver, someone stronger, someone wiser. I still have a lot to learn, but I know now that I am a better person because of this experience. And I will always look back to it as a year full of many emotions and experiences and memories that will always stay with me. I can also say that I was incredibly lucky, because without luck who knows where I would be now. A journey requires a certain amount of luck, you throw yourself into the world off to discover things and meet people and you'll never know where you'll end up landing. And life is a journey, it's the greatest journey of all. Like every journey it has an end, and like every journey it doesn't matter where you go, but who you meet on the road. And in the end, we travel to go home changed.

Mixed feelings.

There are a lot of things that I miss about Italy, even things that I never thought I would have missed.
I miss my room. I miss the road I take everyday when I walk to the city center. I miss taking the bus and even the times when you wait for 40 minutes at the bus stop for a bus that will take you where you have to go, because even if it's cold and it's raining and you're late you have faith that one will come in the end. Weird but true, I also miss my High School classrooms. I miss the P.E. classes before the break, the Philosophy classes at the last period on Saturday, the classes spent to try to understand the math rule on the board that you already know you'll never use again in your life, and the classes spent doing nothing because you have a sub. I miss waiting for the teacher to arrive in the hallway, the afternoons with the drama club and the ones with the book club. I miss the thick, humid air early in the morning that it feels like breathing underwater. I miss the nights spent out with friends and the ones spent home on my couch watching The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. I miss the flavour of italian food like I've never missed it before. I miss the days at the swimming pool, the nights at the climbing gym, the depressing Sundays, the Mondays that are even worse, and the Thrusdays that never end. I miss poetry in my own language, the de Andrè songs, the crap that they talk about all the time on the tv and listening to the radio during dinner. I miss my cats, my bed, by balcony and even my Art History book. I miss my parents, my family and my friends, so hard that now I am crying just thinking about it.

But the truth is that I am not ready to leave, not at all. I don't think I'll ever be. Because even if I miss all these things every second, I know I will have them back in less than two months. What I don't know is when I'll be back to Idaho. When will I be able to hug again the people that I learned to love even if I knew I had only a number of days with them. The people that I learned to call "family" the ones that changed me forever and the ones that I had the time of my life with. The people that left a print on my heart and I will never stop loving. The people that I probably will not see ever again in my life and the ones I am sure I will meet again because I will make it happen. I don't know when I will be able to see again the landscapes of vulcanic rocks and infinite open spaces of Idaho. The snow in May and the breathtaking sunsets from the kitchen window. The big american trucks and the gas stations that have always what you're looking for, the food that doesn't need a comment and the people you see at Walmart that I wouldn't know how to comment. There will not be anymore days spent at school, changing class every hour, trying to open the locker that doesn't want to open with the fear of being tardy. The Drama classes first thing in the morning and the Choir classes that make you wonder why you didn't discover this passion before in life. Lunches in the cafeteria and the ones out on Friday. Songs that start on the radio just at the right moment, that make you think that the DJ must have known how much you needed it. The two kilos buckets of popcorns at the movie theatre and the liter of soda wherever you go. The marshmallows on the fire, the jumps on the trampoline out in the backyard, and the afternoons out with the fourwheelers, with the dirt in your teeth and the mud on your pants. No more accents from the South, East, West, and of people that come from all around the world and who exactly like me are exploring only to realize that they met themselves on the way. No more Sundays at church trying to understand a culture and a religion that I learned to respect even when I don't agree with it, because now I know that are few the things that are wrong in this world, and that in most of the cases, it's just different. No more american literature, poetry in english and movies in the original version (oh, wait, luckly, that will always happen for me from now on.) No more talking in english with people that can't talk to you in any other way. No more stressing to remember a word that doesn't come to your mind not even in italian, no more looking foolish for using a term in the wrong way and then laughing about it for at least an hour, or pronouncing a word wrong and feeling stupid because people don't understand that you are saying 90, not 19. No more "Oh, you're an exchange student? Where are you from? What part of Italy? Do you like american pizza? Have you ever been to Olive Garden? Why don't you have a strong italian accent?"
The list could go on forever, but the truth is that there will never be a day in my life that I won't miss this place and its people. I understood that you learn to live with it. It's the heavy bag of the traveller. Wherever you are there's always gonna be another place on earth you will miss more.
But the thing that for me is priceless is that, wherever you are there's always gonna be another place on earth, far away, that you can call home.

"travel far enough, you meet yourself."

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” 

-e.e.cummings

 I love reading and poetry in particular is something that always touches my heart. Recently I am exploring the powerful words of E. E. Cummings and I have been strucked by his poems.   

This quote in particular really inspired me, because I've been thinking a lot about myself in these last 7 months of my life and I discovered new things, learned, changed and found myself as it never happened to me before. So it's really true that travelling you find yourself, because of what you see, what you experience, but mostly because of who you meet. People have an incredible power over us, they can bring us down or they can make us rise, even with just some simple words, or some underestimated actions. And when you have been sinked by somebody, it's harder to be brought back to the surface. This is why we need people around us. I believe it's in the human nature to surround ourselves with other people. Because it's important to find out who we are, and believe in ourselves, but there's no way to do that alone.

Chris McCandless last thought was "happiness is only real when shared." And I've never felt it more true than now. Now that I find myself surrounded by amazing friends from different parts of the world, who grew up in completely different ways and ended up all in the same place together. All those people that I had the honor to meet became important, and I established strong bounds with them. They are not only my friends, they became my family. Because that's what happens when you travel, when you do it for real. You don't only make your mind and your world bigger, you open yourself to others and you make your family bigger.   

It doesn't take much. Because when you are alone you hang on every little act of kindness you find. And soon enough, those things become more and more important, and then you find yourself revealing what are your deepest fears and aspirations, what keeps you up at night and what you dream about when you are awake. And that's how you know people, that's how you help them from sinking. Even just by listening you're making a big difference into someone's life. And once that the person starts to build up themselves again, when they start to breathe out in the open air at the surface, they will start looking for something bigger, looking at the sky and wondering. Spending time asking things they never asked themselves before. That's how life is made. That's how we find ourselves. With others.
And the more I realize how important these people are to me, the more I wish I could stay with them forever. But I also miss home. I miss who taught me how to fly. And when I will be home again, I will miss who drag me back to the surface when I fell down. Who taught me how to save myself. That's the most precious and hard thing about travelling, and not only about being an exchange student. You have the best and the worst of both worlds. And you want it all. You are constantly divided between two parts of yourself, two homes, but one big family. And you learn to live with it. Because once your horizons are expanded, once you jumped out of your comfort zone, once you lost sight of the shore...there's no coming back. You're not going to be the same ever again. Because that is why you travel, to come home changed. And I always repeat it to myself, because it's the most valuable thing I learned in the last few months.
Life is fast, it flies away at an incalculable speed and soon enough we will all be dust blowing in the wind and no one will remember us, because entropy increases and oblivion is inevitable, and we shall hang on everything we get into this fast, mad, and dark chaos. Because wathever works is what makes us happy. That's what makes us worth it. Mostly it's a matter of luck, coincidence, destiny, fate, karma or wathever you want to call it. We don't have a purpose, we have a chance. So we better use it.

 

America, the beautiful!

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.

"You will never cross the ocean if you don't have the courage to lose sight of the shore."

These few months are probably some of the more significant ones, and also the hardest part of the year. It's the time when you start missing home, but are also feeling completely comfortable in your new home, so you feel like divided between these two emotions. Some days you wish you see your family and friends again, some others you wish you could never leave where you are at the moment. It's the crucial period, when the attachment to your home is gonna fade away, until the last days when you will start thinking again about the fact of coming back and leaving everything and everyone here. There are a lot of different aspects in this experience that will make me grow and learn, but I still think that the hardest one will be when I will have to say goodbye for the second time, and this time I won't have any guarantee of when I will have the opportunity to see these people, that I love so much, again.
It already happened to me a couple of times to wake up in the middle of the night crying because I dreamt that I had to go home before the end of the 10 months, for a reason or another. And apparently the idea of going home right now scares me to death. Sometimes I also cry because I just want to hug my parents, and my friends, and feel them again for real, not only through a computer screen. But that's the point. I know it will happen in just 5 months. I am exactly halfway through my exchange year. This means I only have 5 months left with the people I met during the last 5 months here. The people that changed me. Those people that I love so much and that I know will be heartbreaking to leave without being sure of when I will be able to hug them again.
I am having fun, I made a lot of friends. I am trying not to think about that moment that is just 5 months away in the future, but more about the moment that is 5 months away in the past. The moment I stepped down that last plane, at the Idaho Falls airport. The moment I had no idea my life would have changed so much just by meeting some extraordinary people. The moment I was thinking about how I would have been a different person, after this experience, and I was still wondering how.
The moment I felt like I was running away from my fears, when instead I didn't realize I was tearing them down. I was running into them 100 mph, strong enough to destroy them and step on them.
That is what I try to ocncentrate on every morning when I wake up. Thinking that in 5 months I will be back to my old habits, my old life. I'm just trying to use the time here in the best way possible, living it a 100 %. Taking the good and the bad memories. Like in every good book that has ever been written, you have to cry a little bit, therwise it's not worth it.

2014: new year, new beginning.

2014 started as an awesome year. It may have been a little stressful since now, because next week is finals week and because school started again and holidays are over, but I still had time for great days with friends and family and I'm still making some really good memories. I also started keeping a good memories jar where I put all the good things that happen to me in the everyday life. Some nights I wish I could hug my parents again, or see my friends and talk to them of all the things that worries me and some nights I cry and feel alone, but I am lucky because I have people that apparently care enough to listen to me and they make my worries go away and they are the reason why I am scared of going home and leaving them all here. I don't know when I'm gonna see them again. I don't know for how long I will have to live without having them by my side. I know it's gonna be extremely hard for me when I will go home, and even harder for the people that I will leave here. But whatever will happen I know that I won't give up on us. I won't give up on the friendships. I won't give up on the family that I found so far away from home. I won't forget that this is also my home.
I am also learning a lot more about myself. I am learning that I am a lot more determinated than what I thought, that I can do a lot of things by myself, that I can take a lot of decisions without the need of someone who would take them for me. I learned that I am able to fight for what I really want for myself and for my future. I am constantly worried about my future. I think about it every day. I still don't know where I'm gonna be in 10 years, not even in 2 years. But I know that whatever I will choose it will be the best choice for me, like the one that I took coming here. I may not be good in a lot of things like cooking, doing math, drawing, but I'm pretty sure at this point that I am able to take choices that in a way or another will lead me to the good thing. I believe in myself a lot more. I am confident, I have a lot of strong ideas on a lot of things that I've never even thought about before coming here. I have a lot of more experience on some things than a normal italian girl that is spending her year like a normal high school student in Italy.
I will never be grateful enough to the people that let all this happen. My parents. My family. My friends. My host family. Myself. The people that I met here and decided to let me be part of their lives. And every single day counts, because even when I don't realize it, something is constantly changing inside of me. It is not only my mind or my body. It is also my soul. What I consider soul, which is still part of my brain, is still part of myself, but it's the most mysterious and unconscious part of me. The one that I will probably never understand completely. That complicated and chaotic mass of thoughts and reactions and emotions and feelings that I can rarely phantom into words. That is the deepest and most important part of me, that sometimes I don't recognize in what I do, sometime it drives me crazy, sometimes I find annoying, sometimes it makes me cry and wonder how did I get here. But I'm always thankful for all the experiences that are contributing to slowly change that part of myself, letting me to stay the same too.
And I will never forget what this whole period of my life is giving me. Because "exchange is nothing like you expected it to be, and everything you wanted it to be." So let's make it all I needed it to be too. And let's enjoy the ride.