delayed departures

(My hotel internet ran out before I could get this posted. So here it is, the second to last entry on Merde! ever)

Last night some friends and I said goodbye to Florence by going out to dinner, having a snowball fight in the history-making snowstorm, and stumbling up to Aria’s door for one last hug.  I had planned to wake up a little early this morning and say my own personal goodbye by heading to my favorite cafe for one last sublime cappuccino, but, as always with Italy, things didn’t go as expected.  Interesting fact: when it snows in Florence, the whole city closes.  No one goes to work, no taxi drivers respond to reservations, and (most exasperatingly) only 8 airport employees come to work. My relaxing, hazelnut cappuccino morning suddenly became a frantic race to escape Florence.

Like a network of fugitives on the run, my CET cohorts and I started communicating through rumors and BBM chains about the closed airport, the cancelled flights, and the general sense of “fuck you, eager holiday travelers” we felt from Italian airport employees, the world, Mother Nature, and the slightly off prosciutto in the sandwiches from the overpriced airport cafe.  Long story short, there were hundreds of Americans in Florence’s sketchy airport for many hours, and I don’t think anyone made it home.  Now we’re all sprinkled across free hotel rooms in Germany, hoping for a better tomorrow harder than an Obama voter on November 3rd.

That said, please let me wax nostalgic for minute about my time in Florence.  Like everyone who studies abroad, I had a wonderful time. I had more fun in 4 months than some people get in a lifetime, I made great friends, I changed a lot (mostly for the better), and I learned a lot, both in the classroom and outside of it.  Sometimes our Italian workbook would get strangely poetic and ram some wistful phrase between exercises about who is going to Maria’s party when and what they are bringing (use direct objects!), and this one phrase stuck with me:

Partire e un po’ morire

That “e” should have an accent, but I’m not that good at wordpress.  Basically, it means that to leave is to die a little. That sounds melodramatic, (and is) but still feels a little true.  Even I’ve been surprised at how much Florence, and all that goes with it, has touched me.  This morning I cried and felt short of breath in the airport bathroom, not because of travel stress, but because I felt like it was wrong to take such pains to leave a place I love so much.

When I was here, I seized every moment of the day.  I felt more alive and engaged and happy than I ever have, and I’m terrified to lose it when I come home.  I learned to focus less on the minutiae of errands and obligations, and more on what makes me happy.  I didn’t have a laundry hamper all semester. Instead, I had a pile on the floor under my desk that cycled from there to the washer every week.  And the world didn’t end, I just spent the time I would have been scouring Ikea for some cheap bin at the Uffizi instead.  And for me, an utterly Type A, varsity-level worrier and clean freak, the little things like this were huge. This was my dolce vita, and I will always carry a little of it with me now.

In spite of this admirable personal growth, I cannot wait to do some laundry when I get home.  It will go in a dryer, it will be warm and snuggly, the whole process will be done in 90 minutes and nothing will be stretched to circus-tent proportions.

Some pictures and proof I made it home alive will follow later.