The Time is Coming

I feel like the rest of this summer is going at warped speed- I'm leaving for Ohio, to visit my grandparents, at the end of the week. Then I get to visit one of my best friends in Michigan who has spent the summer in Rome and traveling around Europe. I can't wait to hear about the place that will be my home for the next three and a half months. I am hoping that it makes me even more excited, although I know that it will make me nervous. But isn't that the best part of traveling? The intense fear of being in a place completely exotic and unknown to you?

The next week I am going up north to my friend Andrea's cabin, a weekend of crazy fun on a lake in Brainard. Just 5 girls and a boat. I am so excited to spend some quality time with the best friends I have ever had. It feels like this is the last summer together before we go our separate ways. It's not like the summer after high school, we had the opportunity to spend these last two summers together because we have all come home for the summer instead of staying in the cities in which we go to school. But if everything works out, I hope to stay in Chicago this coming summer and work there and hopefully get some psychological research experience at my university. But anyways, if everything goes according to plan, we won't be together like this again. Of course we will still be friends, but we won't spend at least a few nights a week together; like going to the club, to movies, or hanging out in Liz's hot tub.

However, we are all moving forward, we are becoming adults. And the most important experience, I believe, that I need to have is live in Rome for a semester. Rome has always had a special place in my heart. Despite my external Norwegian features, I am an Italian at heart. I live off pasta, I have been singing "That's Amore" and "Pepino the Italian Mouse" since I was a child, and Roman Holiday is my all time favorite movie. Yes a few of these things might be "Italian American" but it's my heritage. My grandpa would be proud that I associate so much to my Italian heritage rather than my Irish, Czech, German, or even Norwegian. So to spend such an extended period of time in Roma is the greatest gift that I have ever been given.

I'm coming up a month until I get on my flight. There is so much to do until then. And I hope to keep you better updated from now on.

Until then,

Ciao,

Megan