Airplanes, Goodbyes, and Free Advice

This is going to be a quick post because I am incredibly tired, but things are happening, so I must tell you all about them! This morning I said goodbye to my hometown and to my state for the next ten months. The already emotional situation was amplified by the fact that I've had only two and a half hours of sleep.

 I stayed up until 2 last night and had to wake up at 4:30 in order to leave for the airport at 5:30. My wonderful boyfriend Zac got up early too so that he could see me off. I rode with him to the airport. The whole ride, I was ricocheting madly back and forth between crying and laughing. As each place we passed receded into the distance, my brain thought "Goodbye, neighborhood! Goodbye, Earth Fare where I always get sandwiches! Goodbye this road and that road and everything that wasn't important but is!" in a way that uncannily resembled the monologue I performed earlier this year when I played Emily Webb in Our Town. And on that ride to the airport, everything looked different, because I'm not used to the eerie lighting that hangs in the sky just before sunrise. So, by saying goodbye, I quite literally was seeing it all in a "new light." I really think that leaving for an extended period of time has given me a new appreciation for where I'm from. I realized, but never fully appreciated the beauty of the Carolinas before I had to leave them.

Saying goodbye to my boyfriend was honestly one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. The whole ride to the airport, he was holding my hand and I hated not wanting to let go, but having to anyway. And when we finally got to security in the airport, and I had to go through, but he couldn't come with me, I cried and sniffled uncontrollably. Zac and I have been dating for six months and I'm completely, totally in love. Ten months of separate-ness, while made easier by Skype, is going to be tough, but we're going to try with everything we've got.

I finally calmed down a bit when I got my hands on a Starbucks, and I was able to remind myself that I AM GOING TO FREAKING ITALY WHICH IS FREAKING COOL. So that helped.  From that point on I focused on getting myself to New York. My family and I were once again flying space-available, and after failing to get on a couple of really full flights to Lagaurdia, we got on one to Washington DC, where the Laguardia flights had much more readily available seats. On the plane ride I napped, which was much-needed and much-enjoyed. During our interlude in DC, we ate at the Five Guys in the airport and it was by far the best not-grilled-by-my-daddy cheeseburger I have ever eaten. I had the realization that food tastes ten zillion times better when you have an emotional experience, cry your eyes out, nap it off, and THEN eat when you wake up. I napped again, but less soundly on our flight to New York, and then we came in a taxi to the Scotts' apartment where we're staying. It felt like 8 pm, but it was really only 3, which was bizarre.

The afternoon turned out to be incredibly fun. We walked all around the area where they live. I smelled fresh lavender, ate homemade pretzels and champagne grapes, discovered a new band, and received a free hug in Union Square Park. At Washington Square Park, I watched a man jump over a row of six people and I sat down for a chat with a few NYU students who had a sign offering "Free Advice." Usually, being the shy, reserved sort of person I am, I'd never sit down with strangers and chat about anything, let alone all my hopes and fears and crazy emotions regarding Italy, but I did. I think my exchange will be wasted if I don't open myself up to experiences like that, conversations with people. And I'm so glad I decided to go ahead and start approaching the world that way NOW, because it turned out to be really refreshing to talk about it all with some sincere, uninvolved strangers. Because the perspective of my mom and dad, family and friends, while extremely important to me, can become so stale. Hearing the same thoughts and perspective over and over starts to not help anymore. The advice and words of new people that I'll probably never see again managed to help a bunch with sorting through how I'm going to handle leaving my family, and maintaining this long-distance relationship, and adjusting to a new country and life and language.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant and I can't remember what it was called. I'll edit this when I remember. I had Rigatoni in vodka sauce. Afterwards we went across the street for some gelato and I had a small cup of the tiramisu flavor which was absolutely, breathtakingly delicious. I'm trying to keep these flavors all alive in my mind as well as possible so I can do a good comparison later between Italian food in the United States and Italian food in Italy. So, be on the lookout for that post in the future. For now, I really must go to sleep, because I'm about to collapse from exhaustion. Good night!!!

(Me at the Italian restaurant. I still can't remember its name.)

(The view from the restaurant. On the left is Grom, where we had the amazing gelato.)

Like a crazy person.

Even though it is still three months away (which is simultaneously incredibly near and incredibly far) leaving has already started to make me feel strange. It is like the whole goodbye thing has already started. I think that's because school is over. I am completely and totally finished with American high school. Which is WEIRD. And it is making me like a crazy person.

As a junior marshal (one L or two? google doesn't even know), I attended graduation, and in a way I felt like it was MY graduation, too. I'm not ever going to do the whole high school graduation thing as a graduate. I'll still be in Italy this time next year. My school here is just going to mail me my diploma when I get back. And I'm not particularly bothered by that. The whole wearing a cap and gown and walking across the stage thing has never been particularly important to me, and besides I'll get to do that after college. I'm not extremely attached to my school either. Still, I had a funny melancholy feeling the whole time, because this is the end. I'm not even sure why I should be sad about not returning to school. Before, I've never felt particularly attached to my school. In fact, I've always wanted like crazy to get out and do something much less ordinary, just like I am. So I'm having trouble putting a finger on the exact reason for the end of school making me feel so odd.

There are people I'm going to miss indescribable amounts, but most of them I will see over the summer, so it isn't really goodbye yet. They can't be the reason for my weird-ness. I think what I'm actually mourning at the moment is the entire network of familiar faces that I have at school. It's the people who I see and recognize, but don't know on any more than a superficial level. People who I can expect to see in a particular hallway at a particular time. You know how you get in a routine and you cross paths with the same people on a daily basis? Them. Does that make sense? I'm having trouble describing what I mean. I'm going to miss familiarity, which is something I've always taken for granted but won't have for much longer. In Italy, everything is going to be different and unfamiliar, and that scares me a little.*

I'm just going to blame my ridiculous waves of nostalgia during the past week or so on hormones. I mean, I am clearly not in my right mind when I am sniffling and stifling tears over a critical reading passage in the SAT about a character feeling a disconnect with her mother after being apart for a long time. (True story. I sorta teared up during the SAT.) Such silliness can't last long, I'm sure.

But everything is going to be okay because it is summer now! My summer is going to be great; I can already tell. Lots of marvelous things are in store. For one thing, my visa information came in the mail the other day, and it looks like I'm going to have to make a trip to Miami to get that all squared away. Which my parents find stressful, but which I see as really cool. I'm still not sure when I'll be going there, but it'll be exciting when I do!

And speaking of exciting, I'm going to New York City on Friday! It is a slightly sudden trip, and I am absolutely thrilled. I'll tell you all about it when I get back. Hopefully somehow in a way that relates to Italy... hmm... well this is going to be my first on my own traveling experience, so I guess I could look at it as practice for Italy. That might be a stretch, but oh well. Maybe I'll even make some pertinent observations about America's culture and how that's reflected in our country's most populous city and by knowing my own culture more closely I'll be better prepared to immerse myself in a different culture. So, it does relate! I'm perfectly justified in telling you all about my adventures in New York. Until then!!

*My mother said she hoped I would display some "honesty" and "raw emotions" on my blog. Happy, Mama? I don't want to sound like an overly dramatic emotional teenager, but she doesn't want me to be purely factual with a blog that sounds like an agenda. I'll find a balance eventually, I'm sure. I'm going to do my best to make this an authentic account of my genuine experience.