I’m In Italy!!

It is just as I remembered it. I am here, outside of Florence, staying with my host family from 2008 for a few days before I travel onward to Parma.

Since being here for the past 2 days, I have done the following: eat, sleep, drink espresso made for me by my host dad, drink wine, try to talk in Italian, listened to my host family talking in Italian and understood 75%, learned a few new words, cuddled with my host family’s cat, and played with my host family’s grandchildren.

The whole experience felt like a dream from the moment that I left my house on Monday morning, and that feeling only intensified once I arrived at the Frankfurt airport, when I got my passport stamped by a gruff German customs official (no worries, I melted her enough to get a smile out of her!), sprayed myself with ten different perfumes and ogled ten varieties of Milka chocolates in a German duty-free shop (one could spend an entire day in that airport just shopping!), and then realized I really didn’t want to miss my flight to Florence and hustled over the gate.

I really wanted to see a bunch of Italians lingering at the gate, but my fellow travellers were more international…a group of American backpackers, a few Germans, a few businessmen, a multi-generational Asian family, and just 3 teenage Italian boys travelling together.

But when I got off of the plane in Florence and emerged into the sunshine, I could barely stop myself from jumping up and down on the tarmac. And as I waited 15 minutes for my baggage to be unloaded onto the carousel, I thought “Yes! I am in Italy!”

I really am.