From Orvieto to Home

July 22, 2013 - Monday

Summer began over a month ago when I stepped off the plane, hauled my heavy bags through customs and was immediately greeted by Mom, Dad, and an iced coffee. Soon I hopped into the car and a few hours later I was in my new room in my old house. It felt familiar because I was home, but strange because all of my stuff had been moved into Michael's room. Suddenly I had suitcases to unpack with clothes, souvenirs, posters, scarves from Italy, and tried to make them fit in my room that is always covered with high school artwork and field hockey awards. I took down the high school art and put up my sketches from Disegno. Then I took down old pictures and taped up pictures of the duomo, pictures from Rome, birthday cards from new friends. I cleared off my bookshelves and replaced the old textbooks with my whole collection of Dante books, The Life of St. Francis, and all of the journals I made during the last month of the semester - full of blank pages. My final project from Disegno hangs from the corner of the room, folded in half because it's took long to hang from anything but a studio ceiling. Even if the past few weeks, I've ordered 101 free prints from Shutterfly and they sit in a stack on my desk (well, Michael's old desk) next to a pile of wine corks that I've been planning to assemble into a cork board. 

But no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to make all of this stuff fit into my room! Now it's a complicated mess of high school sport awards tucked into shelves with drawings and pictures and sketches of Italy tacked up onto the walls. This has been the unyielding question since I've been home as I try to make my semester in Italy fit seamlessly with my home and with Gordon. Even in on June 15th when I returned home, in a matter of hours, my weepy airport self (if you remember how many tears there were on that day) had to quickly turn back into my home-self as my summer days were suddenly filled with babysitting, pretending to work out for field hockey, working at the preschool camp, applying for fall internships, stressing about fall internships, thinking about the future, stressing about the future, trying to buy a car, realizing that all of my money was spent on gelato and train tickets, etc. Anyways, you understand. I think. My life in Italy was quickly pushed aside and replaced by all of these consuming things. 

But I'm reminded again that the past semester was real when friends from home ask me about it, family friends, my parents' friends, people from church. Everyone asks "How was Italy?" and I can only reply with a simple "Good! It was really great!" and that answer just seems so... awful. Even though it is the truth! Italy was "so good" and "really great" but I find myself frustrated that I can't explain everything and at the same time, I don't think that all of these people that ask me, "How was Italy?" really want me to blab on for days about it. 

I'm even conflicted about this blog. I wrote 113 posts! One for every day in Italy! Individually, I often think the posts are a little boring at times, especially during those days where I spent most of my time in the studio and only stopped to take a nap. But when I think about all 113 posts together, I like them and it's crazy to think that I spent 113 days there (113 bowls of cornflakes!!!!!!!!! That's intense!). But now what? I have a feeling that if I start writing about what I eat here at home, it's going to be significantly less exciting than when I wrote about what I ate in Italy - although cornflakes are probably the most boring food I can think of (other than saltine crackers). So then I decided that maybe I would do a series of reflection posts. But as you can see, it's now July 22nd and I'm now writing a scattered post about how I don't know what to say when people ask me about my semester and how I don't know what to do with my blog now! Sigh. 

The stack of things piling up on my desk - these are the 19 birthday wishes that my Orvieto friends mailed to me for my birthday!

Making cappuccinos at home

The cork collection that I haven't made into a cork board yet