Wednesday, December 15, 2010

L'ultimo giorno ad Alba..

This is it. Today (well, yesterday now) was our last day in Alba. in Italy. in Europe! It is currently 256 in the am. We leave Alba in approximately 28 minutes.. eep! I've had my last gelato, my last meal, and my last shower in Italia. I tried to get a last siesta in as well, but I was just too antsy, haha. Hopefully I'll be tired enough to get some sleep on the plane. If everything goes smoothly, I should be back in Maryland by 5:52pm EST.


Yay! :D

Monday, December 13, 2010

Lists & Excitement :)

News/Updates..
  1. Last week were my FINAL exams. Literally. As of Thursday morning around 10am,  I am done with college!! It's pretty crazy. I don't think that's going to sink in either until I get my degree in the mail, until I walk in May, or until I actually get a full-time job. Regardless, I am done with academics - no more classes, no more homework, no more tests, no more papers.. definitely an awesome feeling. :)
  2. If you glance over at my counters on the left side of my blog, you'll see that I have three more days until home sweet home! Technically though, it's two and a wake-up, as my dad would say, since there is only the evening of today left. :)
 Plans for the Remainder of My Time Here..
  1. Clean and pack. This process has already begun. (Sort of.) Our room has been swept, random papers and notebooks have been sorted for tossing out, luggages are ready to be filled with stuff to go back home. Aaaand that's as far as I got for today. I was actually really excited about the notion of packing, and then I realized I didn't know where to start. So I'm tackling more of that tomorrow :P
  2. Hiking tomorrow! After Saturday's short hike on a trail overlooking Alba, I decided it needed to happen again, in greater length. It'll be like my last excursion to take in Alba in all its glory and give it all the appreciation it deserves :)
  3. Eat out at my favorite restaurants - Duchessa tonight (I wanted to see if I could repeat my feat of eating an entire pizza in one sitting, but alas, I did not succeed, haha), then I think Locanda tmrw and Hemingway on Wednesday. I'm also skipping out on cafeteria meals for lunches, b/c I have enough red tickets to tide me over. I had a lunch date with Nikki at VinCafe today and got this steak dish, and it was like, legit steak with herb seasoning.. so good! Basically I'm going to savor every last meal I have here in Italy.
  4. Gelato! At Desmosedici, our gelateria of choice, they have those buy 10, get 1 free cards. I only need two more stamps, and then I get a freebie. It's totally happening before we leave. :D
  5. Almost forgot about this one: I gotta do the last of the souvenir shopping - chocolates and cookies, mostly. :)
Things I'm Looking Forward to in the US..
  1. Seeing family and friends, of course! I'm excited for hangout time with my friends, being able to bug my sister next door with random stuff that pops into my head, playing mahjong with my family, Christmas caroling with my best friends, movie nights, everything :)
  2. My bed, my room, my house, all familiar aspects of home.
  3. Mom's cooking :)
  4. The variety of available food.
  5. Decorating for Christmas!
  6. Hoodies and sweatpants, oh my goodness. Can't wait to bum it for basically the rest of winter :P
  7. Texting, and being able to use my phone in general.
  8. Driving.
  9. Being able to function in society b/c I'll know the language & customs :P
& Lastly, I don't have a list immediately in mind for this one, but this is what makes leaving Italy feel most bittersweet:

What I'm Going to Miss Most About Italy is..

the fact that it's absolutely, completely, utterly
gorgeous. beautiful. magnificent. stunning. 
AWESOME.

I know that for much of this semester, I've kind of lost sight of how lucky I am to even be here. I'm in another country on another continent an entire ocean away from home. It's at times like this when God will remind me how fortunate I am to be here by opening my eyes to the splendor around me. Italy really is a beautiful country. I've got several pictures where I've tried to capture it, but of course they can't. This is why I'm stoked to go hiking again tomorrow, and take one last look out over the amazing town that has taken me in for the last three months. Being able to see the stunning landscapes and countryside with my own eyes is something that I'm not going to be able to relate to others when I'm back home; They can see the pictures I've taken and try to imagine being here, but soaking everything in with my own eyes and reveling in its magnificence is an experience that'll be all my own, and that's a memory that'll be most cherished when I think about Italy. :)









Pisa & Florence (Take Two)

So this past weekend was the Pisa/Florence trip with the entire SMCM group, & I was really glad that I'd already gone earlier in the semester with Chelsea b/c we really didn't have all that much time there. We left Saturday morning, stopped by Pisa for about an hour and a half (the Tower is still there, still leaning), arrived in Florence by sunset, and then left Florence just one day later. So my time there was pure leisure, no need to hit up the tourist spots or anything. I just wandered around with Sarah and Lilian, did a last bit of souvenir shopping, and then window shopped for the rest of the time.

Saturday night we managed to find a Japanese restaurant, which was definitely a highlight. It was this tiny little nook of a place, with only like six or seven chairs, but it was amazing. Lilian and I were definitely hyping it up because we had been craving sushi for basically the last month or two that we've been here, and this place looked fairly legit, haha. It was called Lucky Sushi, and it was delish.

Sarah's salmon fried rice - yum!
Lilian's california roll & spicy tuna roll - also yum!
My noodles with shrimp and california roll - not exactly what I expected cuz I thought it was gonna be soup, but definitely still delish!
 We spent the rest of the evening wandering around the market stalls and admiring the Christmas lights adorning the city streets. Most everybody else in our program went out drinking that night, but the three of us were pretty content to stay in our room, surprisingly entertained by this one program on Italian TV called Io Canto (I sing) - we think it was some kind of children's singing competition combined with a concert, and a majority of the singers were honestly not that great (there were a few that we loved, tho), but they did sing some American Christmas carols and it was pretty fun to add our own commentary. 

Pretty Christmas lights! They had many different kinds on different streets, along with a bunch of lit Christmas trees, but my camera doesn't do well to capture them, so I kind of just didn't bother with most of them.
Christmas lights above the market stalls
Different lights still lit on Sunday morning
Sunday morning we got up for our free breakfast, and Lilian and I decided to check out Sunday Mass at the Florence Duomo. It was very cold in there and the service was all in Italian, but I was able to follow the general sequence of the readings and whatnot (the bulletin also had the readings in English, which was nice), and we just took in the beauty of the church from the inside. The Masses are held in the part that is not open to tourists in the afternoon, so we were able to see the large altar up close, as well as the huge painting on the inside of the dome, which was quite grand. Travel guide Rick Steves has said that it was Michelangelo's inspiration for the Sistine Chapel, and after seeing the entire thing now, I could definitely see that. I actually kind of liked it more than the Sistine Chapel.. it just seemed more vibrant or something.. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but basically it was neat getting to see that in its full splendor.

The main altar (not where we had Mass, the service we went to was in a smaller side chapel)
The awesome inside of the Dome - click to see in more detail.
The rest of the morning was spent just wandering around Florence; I took Lilian to see the Ponte Vecchio bridge and Piazza Michelangelo, where we got a hazy view overlooking Florence in the fog. Lunchtime we met up with Simona and Dan (so they could cover our lunch expenses, our cash funds were pretty low/nonexistent, haha), and then we had about two more hours of wandering and window shopping until it was time to leave. We meandered down this one road that seemed to consist entirely of shops with random stuff (a telephone in the shape of lips or a high heel, shiny frog figurines with feathered boas and tiaras, a fairly atrocious assortment of possibly designer dresses, lots of fur and shinyness all around..), so we had fun dipping in and out of those and commenting on all of the oddities in what I dubbed "Florence's FunkyTown" :P Basically it was just a chill day of roomie hangout and being silly time, so it was a lot of fun :)

Ponte Vecchio bridge
Me in front of the bridge
Christmas trees on the bridge
  

We tried two shots of us looking nice and smiling. They didn't work out so well. This was take three :P
 

The last time we were here, Chelsea and I saw like three different Asian weddings by Piazza Michelangelo. Apparently the trend continues even in December.
 



The clouds started to clear up some in the afternoon, giving us a rather glorious sunset when it came time to leave :)
 

Saturday, December 04, 2010

Picture Post: Overlooking Alba

So in the spirit of taking the time to appreciate Alba in my last days here, I decided to go do some exploring & take advantage of this sunny Saturday. After asking Sarah where they had gone hiking with Professor Don Stabile earlier in the semester, I set out to try to find it, and I think I did. I don't know how far down the trail I got, but it was very serene and peaceful, and I got some spectacular views overlooking Alba. Might try going again & getting an earlier start if we get another sunny day in Alba, possibly after we get back from Pisa & Florence. :)

As usual, none of these pictures do God's creations justice, but if you click on them and look at them in more detail, you might get a better idea of how majestic the views are :]

I found this map after going a ways down the street across from the boys' apt. I took the green trail cuz it was closest :)
There were these signs periodically along the trail, & they were really useful :]
Panoramic overlooking Alba - click to view bigger.
 


Love that you can see the mountains in the distance, and even more mountains further in the back, kind of faint & covered in snow - maybe the Alps?
 

This is as far down the trail as I got, b/c my nose started bleeding from the dry air unfortunately, so I decided to head back before I ran out of tissues :[
 




Bittersweet.

The countdown to home is down to twelve days...

Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely way excited to come home in less than two weeks, but now things are starting to settle in that not only am I counting down the days to home, I'm starting a list of lasts for Italy. This is our last weekend in Alba, since next weekend we'll be on our school-sponsored trip to Pisa & Florence. Today was the last time I'd go to Saturday market & get my routine rotisserie chicken and fries. I went out this morning and just took it all in; I breathed in the lovely chocolate Ferrero scent in the air that I already know I'm going to miss; I looked each of the vendors that I went to in the eyes and gave them a sincere smile and thanks, because they're all so nice and friendly; I took a little bit of time to just observe all the people around me, to look at their faces & listen to the friendly Italian banter that is still pretty foreign to my ears.

I know everyone tends to rave about a study abroad semester or year or whatever as a life-changing experience, that you come back a different person, enlightened or something. I would say that I'm definitely still the same person, albeit having delved a little more into the drinking scene than I ever would have at home, haha. I wouldn't say that I've gotten enlightenment, or anything deep like that, haha. I know I keep saying that if there's anything I've learned while being here, it's that I've gained a greater appreciation for home and all that that entails - that even though we've all gotten settled and comfortable here in Alba, it just hasn't really been home. But you know what? No, it may not have the people nearest & dearest to me, but it has provided a place for me to feel secure, a place for me to stay, to get familiar with, a place for me to call "home" without trying to replace my home. Does that make any sense?

Basically, I love this little city. I love the quaint town feel of it, the friendly people, the chocolate in the air, the gorgeous hills and vineyards surrounding it. It really has been the perfect place for me to come for a semester abroad.

Looking back on the last 3 months, (the past year even,) the time really has flown by. I still don't think it's gone by too fast so that I didn't get to enjoy everything, but it has flown by. I remember the most exciting time for me was the first two weeks, when I was reveling in the newness of everything, the exhilarating fact that I had finally made it to Italy. Then, after a while, I think I got a little jaded and used to everything here. I stopped taking pictures of everything I saw, I stayed in a lot because I was lazy to go out, I started thinking more about home than I appreciated being here in Italy. Now that my time here is coming to a close, I'm starting to revert back to my attitude at the beginning of the semester. For the first two weeks, I reveled in the newness of it all; Now, in my last two weeks, I want to take the time to revel in the familiarity of it all, to appreciate everything that I've kind of just looked over in the last couple of months here.

Who knows when, if ever, I'll make it back to Alba? I'm still very much looking forward to home, but I know that this place is always going to have some fondness in my heart, and I'm sure I will miss it once I'm back in the US.

<3

Thursday, December 02, 2010

Accomplished!

Musicology Final Paper: Complete and sent in.

Classes for the semester: Complete.
Classes for my entire. college. career: Complete!

I have gone to my last class for my Bachelor's degree EVER. I have one week of final exams between me and my Bachelor's degree; I have exactly two weeks between me and HOME!

:)