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.