Ci vediamo dopo, l'Italia!

After:

almost 4 months, countless new great friends, traveling to Florence, Venice, Rome, Sorrento, Capri, Pompeii, Siena, Perugia, Chianti, Paris, and back to Prague, learning a solid basic Italian, lots of gelato, pizza, pasta, and stir fry (our apartment specialty), giving over 50 tours at Palazzo Vecchio, completing 5 paintings and a portfolio of fashion photography, gaining 10 pounds (see gelato, etc. above!), and traveling back to the U.S. for over 20 hours........

.........I'm home.

Il mio ultimo giorno.

(My last day.)

Well, this is it. Today I have to finish my bucket list - see the last things to see, eat the last things to eat, say the last goodbyes to be said. :(

The past couple weeks have been really busy and really fun. I finished up all my schoolwork, most notably all of my artwork. Finished tour guiding at Palazzo Vecchio. Had my last monday lunch date with Amanda (a running tradition). Had my last drink at our favorite bar. Went out to dinner with all of my housemates for the last time.

Even though this program made it more difficult to assimilate into the culture, I still feel great about the experiences I've come away with. I saw so much art I feel like my head might explode! I ate so much I feel like there's two of me coming home (I even tried traditional Florentine steak this week - rare almost to the point of walking around). I think I successfully learned a bit of Italian! It only happened in the last few weeks, but I feel like I broke through the wall and can actually speak and understand. What a great feeling! I've been having a bunch of long conversations with Italians...in Italian! The only problem is that we can only talk about the past or the present because I never learned future tense in my class. I've never felt so comfortable with a language before and I'm really sad that I can't keep going with it.

Mostly, I'm so bummed to leave the people here. The most amazing thing happened with our apartment: our program threw 6 random girls together who lived together perfectly. Seriously, it was a dream. We all complimented each other so well and got along great, without having to spend all of our time together. I'm so going to miss hearing Sara and Kayla laugh hysterically in the kitchen while Ashley does art, helping Liat with her hair, coming home to Lauren asleep on the couch by accident. I'm going to miss cooking together, even when we weren't all making the same thing (most likely some form of stir fry). I'll even miss this rundown apartment, along with all the yelling in the street or the guys' music blasting in the apartment below us. It felt like a big family, which I guess is a big part of Italian culture anyway. I feel so lucky to have found that here.

Tonight my taxi is picking me up at 3am for my 6:50 flight. After another 18 hours of flying and layovers, hopefully I'll be at home!

Whoops.

I broke my bed.

Well, Sara, Kayla, Amanda and I broke my bed.

My stupid stupid bed.

(The bed that I hate with a burning passion...it's so uncomfortable that I've had re-occuring dreams that I'm getting shot in the back!)

We broke it while watching the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun," eating cereal, and drinking tea together.

It broke as soon as Ashley walked in the apartment.

(Who has been having the most ridiculous luck this semester - breaking everything from her phone charger 3 times to her computer, her foot, and an olive oil bottle...poor girl.)

And without warning one of the plastic legs of my stupid stupid bed completely broke off.

Causing the entire bed to collapse on one side, sending all of us screaming.

And then into fits of giggles.

Now I have that corner of my stupid stupid bed held up by my bedside table underneath.

This entire apartment is falling apart.

(Have I mentioned the massive mold monsters coming from the scary water damage in our bathroom and kitchen? It's literally making me sick!)

Anyway, whoops!

"Ciao, Bella!"

Saying that I hear this popular phrase (called out to young women by usually older men) all the time is a serious understatement. Who knew that being called beautiful could be so annoying?

I know what you're thinking - that I should take this as a compliment, to feel good about myself. But if you walked out your front door in the morning to a creepy man looking you up and down, yelling "Ciao, Bella!", you'd be seriously sick of it too. And it's not like they discriminate either. Every girl hears this all day, every day.

Sometime they change it up a little; "Hey, babyyy!", "Come here, sweetie!", simply "Ciao!" or "Bella!" (most of the time whispered creepily in your ear), and once a man popped up from behind a cart and said, "You are sooo..........(long pause)............CUTE!" (he had forgotten the word for cute). Sometimes they don't say anything at all...they just grab my butt instead, met with a slap to move their hand and a shrill, "SCUSA!", from me.

Clearly these alternative catcalls are no better than the good old, "Ciao, Bella!"

The other day, though, one particular man took the cake for his very original come-on. I was walking down the street right by my house with a group of people and this particular man, probably in his 40s, walked right across my path. He proceeded to look me up and down with a flirty look, and then...

...HE POKED ME IN THE BELLY!

This is easily the strangest out of all the pick up attempts I've received in three months. He didn't even say anything. Now I've thought about this a lot and I still have no idea what he meant by this poke. He didn't even poke me in the pudgy part, instead it was in the upper abs. Was I supposed to find this attractive? To think he was funny? Was he saying that I'm fat? Or maybe that I just have a rather nice tummy?

I still have no idea. You're guess is as good as mine.

What did I do, you may ask? Well, other than stop dead in my tracks with a look of utter shock on my face, my only reaction was to sputter out a very surprised, "Noooooooo!"

As weird as this interaction was, it's actually one of my favorite and silliest stories from Florence this whole semester.

In fact, last night I was out with my friend Amanda and we were approached by two 20-something Italian men. They were making valiant attempts at conversation and so we decided to practice our Italian language skillz. I brought up the subject of the common phrase, "Ciao, Bella!", trying my hardest to explain that "Non mi piache, 'Ciao, Bella!'" I even told them about this bizarre poking incident, met with confused faces. However, my message clearly did not reach these two fine fellas; we knew it was time to go when they begun asking us if we slept in the same bed together and started stroking my leg. These equally as annoying actions were received with our own common catch phrase, often uttered to these kind of men:

"Dobbiamo andare!" ("We have to go!")