Bittersweet December

December is bittersweet this year. It is the month of an Italy trip with my mother and Christmas with my family, but it is also the end. The end of a semester where I learned so much about myself and the person I am in relation to the world. I can't help but be sad that this is ending, this wonderful time that I have looked forward to since I came to Loyola. 

Well, actually before that, since the first time I came to Europe in 2007. I wanted to be able to spend so much time here to immerse myself in a culture completely different from my own...my dad always tells me, "Well, Megan, you've always had happy feet." Truer words have never been spoken haha.

I'm the girl who would make list after list of places I wanted to visit. I have a Time magazine with the 100 Best Places in the World..I cross them off as I visit them. I have known for so long that the world is larger than Minnesota, even the United States and I have made many sacrifices to be able to travel and see the world. I made a bargain with my parents my sophomore year of high school, I would get a job and pay for half of my France trip and they would pay the other half. So I started working at St. John's Hospital that summer after I turned 16. The next summer, I was off to Paris and Southern France. That fall, in 2008, I came home with a brochure; Mrs. Bartel was taking a group to Rome and Greece. My mom instantly said, "No Megan, you just got back from Europe!" So I told her, "Nope, sorry, I'm going" I worked 30 to 35 hour weeks the fall of my senior year of high school to pay for the deposit and the trip, and writing out that $700 deposit was the most exhilarating experience, I was headed back to Europe.

Two years later, here I am again. I filled out the application weeks in advance, I was one of the first students accepted to the Rome Center. When I got the acceptance letter I screamed, I ran around called my parents jumping up and down. I started counting down 6 months in advance. I worked that whole summer at St. John's and I nannied for my cousin Margie. Rome was calling me, it had been too long.

So now that this experience is coming to an end, I can only look back at the pictures and read through my journal and feel a sense of melancholy. This time was a transformation, I became a more confident person. I have become completely ok with who I am. I've accepted my faults and have become exactly who I have always wanted to be: a young confident woman who is completely comfortable in her own skin. I might have given that impression before, but now I feel it, truly. Rome and the Rome Center have helped me become this person. I am incredibly grateful.

A alumni recently returned to the Rome Center and he wrote a letter to us. I just think it is beautiful, so I thought I would share it with you:

Dear Students,

When I got into the cab, after leaving Loyola this last time, that awful sense of missing someone, something, that sense of not having said what I meant to say, that sense of indefinable loss, came over me.  It does, each and every time - from the sunny day in June, 1969, right up to now.  How lucky am I to feel such a connection to a place, to those there, to this wonderful idea of John Felice's.

You'll feel the same thing.  I know it.  We and all those before you, feel the same thing.  It's just there.  It always will be. 

Keep close to each other.  Mind each other.  Smile that certain way. Knowing we share something special- Rome.

Jack O'Connell

He is exactly right, I can't imagine how I am going to feel leaving this place for the last time, when I pick up my suitcase here and my mom and I board that plane destined to Chicago. Happiness for returning home? Sure. Longing for Rome and J-Force? Of course. Sadness over leaving my new best friends? Definitely. The only way to explain it is...bittersweet.


My life will never be the same.


So, thank you John Felice, for your little idea of students studying in Rome, for your inspiration and perseverance. You are sincerely missed and your legacy will live on through everyone who has the opportunity to spend time in this amazing place.


I will always remember that I have a home in Rome too.




Ciao Bella