Arrivederci America!

Well, the day is finally here (...almost). Tomorrow night I take off, landing in Rome on Saturday morning. From there I will hang out in the airport with those who have already arrived as we await the arrival of all of our classmates. Then we'll hop on a bus for a three hour bus ride to Perugia, where I hope will grant me some of my first views of the Eternal City, the magnificent Italian countryside, and our hilltop home. I hope my tendency to not be able to sleep on long trips before life changing events does not continue. Luckily, I'm on a non-stop overnight flight, and I'm hoping that will also minimize the toll of jet lag as well. 

Closer and Closer...

So I had a dawning realization around 12:03 Tuesday night, it is now June and my trip would be coming up a lot faster than I realized. A quick glance at my countdown, inspired by one random day of paloozing around at German Tutoring with Maggie, confirmed this. No longer at triple digits when I just started, or even a seemingly abundant number of days, but only 29. Now just 4 weeks from my overnight flight from Detroit to Rome, all of the scary logistics of what I still need to do - and others want to do - are setting in. Granted a month is still a long time, but it is still surreal how close it now feels. Just the turning of a clock brought a swift change from "Meh, I've got plenty of time" to "AH I've got to do things now now now" literally overnight.


On a side note, Italian classes are going well. I am learning a lot, though I recognize that I'll need to teach myself some basic phrases and will still feel deep over my head. As long as I can master phrases like "How do I get to X" or "Where the *%#*!`@ am I?!" I will feel accomplished. I can also say last night is the first time I've actually dreamed in Italian - ok, maybe that's a little strong but the language was involved. Sitting in an Italian restaurant, the waiter apparently immediately picked us out as Americans and started speaking English. Not to be outdone, I ordered in Italian and made sure to reason out that I said Grazie and Prego. It sounds silly, but dream-me was pretty smug about it, and I was actually kind of impressed later that Italian has started to seep into my subconscious. I don't remember when my first experience of German dreaming took place, but it was certainly not a few weeks into a crash course.