In Flight

And I’m off!

A little bit startling, really.

I’m a pretty seasoned traveler, but this departure somehow seems different from the normal, almost casual goodbye-I’ll-see-you-at-the-end-of-the-term. I think my unusual nervousness is a result of the combination of goodbye family, goodbye friends, and goodbye familiar culture – that’s quite a few comfort zones gone in the tailwinds of this plane flying me from San Diego to Washington DC. And gone further and further behind me with each upcoming flight, first from DC to Munich and then from Munich to Genoa. These goodbyes do make me a little bit nervous, and a little bit wistful for all I am leaving behind for three months. But interrupting that is the excitement of HOLY SMOKES I’m going to FLORENCE!!! For THREE MONTHS!!! Wow. … wow. Italy. Florence. The art, the culture. The language. And a city! I’ve never lived in a city before. So many new things in this experience. And I am really looking forward to finally getting to live in another country. The experience of a foreign country becoming a place that I call my home!

… I’m interrupted by the pleasure of watching an airplane movie without sound – every once in awhile you get some great, totally out of context scenes which never do get context, since they have no words and are gone in the moment. On one flight I watched the whole length of Mission Impossible III without sound, and it was actually better than when I saw it later with sound! Anyways, back to Florence …

Hopefully it will be a great time. If I can at least get a good host family then I think I can deal with just about anything else. I am well supplied in terms of things necessary to survival for three months, such as clothes, books, electronic gizmos and gadgets… rain boots. Those sorts of things.

I went through my usual pre-term packing frenzy last night, many thanks to my mom. Well, actually “last night” isn’t entirely accurate, to be truthful I probably have to say the whole day – how does packing take so bloody long?! I suppose that packing wasn’t all I was doing. I had a few last minute errands to run, and of course I had to hit the essential stops before I left. These essentials include breakfast (large, fresh-squezed orange juice, harder to get when I leave sunny San Diego, and the omelet special which ironically enough was Italian sausage) at my favorite breakfast place, The 101 Diner. And for dinner we went out to Las Olas, our favorite Mexican place, for one last good Mexican meal before leaving. That was one of the funny things about leaving for college two years ago – at home I was never huge on Mexican food, but I didn’t realize how much I was used to it. When I came home for Christmas freshman year the first three dinners I ate were at Mexican places. Anyway, the final essential stop last night, after a delicious dinner and a walk along the beach to get to the car (despite some miscommunication about where exactly the car was) was ice cream at Coldstone’s. Although I am sure that I will not lack for good ice cream in Italy!

Definitely looking forward to that gelato. When I went to Florence in 2001 with my dad we read in the guide book that the author had conducted a survey to find out which gelato place was the best in the whole city. We of course didn’t trust his authority, or deem his taste buds as discerning to our particular tastes as our own taste buds, so we decided to that it was really quite necessary to conduct our own survey. We probably had gelato four times a day for those two days. But I realize now that two days really isn’t quite enough to conduct a thorough survey. So, in the interest of scientific curiosity, of course, I am planning to continue this survey. Check back in a week or so, and I’ll let you know my preliminary results. And, of course, I'll also let you know how the non-gelato part of my life is going.