I suppose it *was* life changing.....

Well, I'm back in Spokane. I was gone for 8 days. Not exactly the two months I was planning on being away, but enough time to realize that this was the wrong time/place for an adventure. From the very beginning of this process (from when Northwestern cancalled their program and pawned me off on Arcadia) I have been only mildly excited and fairly to extremely scared. I always felt as though the people at the Arcadia offices were clueless. I mean, really, the first time I even felt like someone with the program cared or had a clue what was going on was the day before I left when I got an email from the area coordinator (Tina) with some information regarding the first day or two in Lecce. Once I arrived, they picked us up at the airport Friday and took us to an agriturismo (working farm + bed and breakfast + restaurant) called Casale Sombrino, as promised. It was an absolutely wonderful place (complete with a three hour dinner made entirely of foods grown or made on their farm) but there was still no sign of the program being organized. Saturday morning they talked with us for about 45 minutes without managing to say much of worth about what would be happening to us in the next few days/weeks. They took us into Lecce and dropped us off at our apartments, which were spread all over the city. If we wanted to, we could meet back up with everyone at 6:30 that night so they could help us shop for a few groceries and possibly buy international cell phones. By this time, though, I was already completely overwhelemed. I started having anxiety attacks the first night I was in Italy (at Casale Sombrino) and when I talked to one of the "advisors" on Saturday morning, she dismissed me as being homesick. She said they would make sure to check up on me a lot, but that was right when they were dropping us off at our apartments and leaving us on our own for the afternoon. Luckily, one of the other girls on the program (who went to high school with my Northwestern roommate.....small world) was extremely helpful. She hung out with me Saturday afternoon and evening (I was panicing whenever I was left alone), let me stay at her apartment Saturday night since my roommate was enjoying a night out on the town, helped me through the day Sunday (when the program left us completely by ourselves, contrary to the "I'll help you through this" promise) and talked me through my decision to go home Monday morning. Between my stressors at home before I left, never being fully excited to go on the trip, being plopped into the middle of a strongly Italian city where nobody spoke English with nothing more than a faulty map, still not knowing anything about the program, and feeling antipathy from the leaders of the program, I decided that Lecce was not the place for me to be. Monday morning when we were supposed to go to the school (which, of course, they hadn't so much as driven us past) to take a placement exam, I walked up to one of the leaders and told her that I needed to return to the states. Several people tried to convince me to stay, but my decision had been made. Why didn't they care that much over the weekend when I couldn't stop crying between panic attacks? If they were that concerned over my well-being, they shouldn't have left me alone in a strange city all weekend. Thank god for the friend that stood by my side. (Really, Sarah, thank you....). They finally helped me get to the train station and onto a train to Rome, because I couldn't do anything to change my plane tickets unless I was physically present at the Rome airport. I got to Rome Monday evening and was met by the woman who is in charge of all of Arcadia's programs in Italy. She took me to a wonderful dinner, got me settled into a cute little hotel, and told me someone from the office would pick me up the next morning (Tuesday) to go to the airport. Someone did pick me up and take me there, but US Airways wasn't able to get a flight out until Thursday morning. They took me back to my hotel, gave me a map of Rome and a few instructions, and left me on my own. Thankfully, I was more okay with this than when they did the same thing in Lecce. I know enough Italian to be able to take care of myself in Rome (and if I ever got flustered and couldn't remember how to say something, enough people speak English that it wasn't a big deal) and I was comforted that I was on my home. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday exploring Rome - I saw the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Vatican, and even a few random British Brass Bands that were marching around the Vatican.......random, huh? I think that Rome might have been a much better place for me to be studying, but hindsight is 20/20, right? Thursday I flew out of Rome to Philadelphia (my flight was delayed 2 1/2 hours) and from Philadelphia to Seattle (that flight had been delayed 2 hours). Because of all the delays, I knew in Philadelphia that I wouldn't make the connection in Seattle to catch my Seattle to Spokane flight. Even thought I speak the language in Seattle, I didn't want to be stranded overnight, so my dad drove to Seattle to meet me. He and I stayed Thursday night in a hotel in Issaquah (a Seattle suburb) and then drove home Friday morning. I slept 11 hours last night (Friday night) - it feels great to be home.

To answer a question that many people ask: yes, I will return to Europe someday. The Lecce part was pretty traumatizing, but I really enjoyed Rome. Lecce is a strange little place. It's kind of "Italy extract", I guess. Not at all like Rome or Florence where there are enough tourists wandering around that it shares a lot of characteristics with America. There was really nothing in Lecce that was familiar to me at all, and I had no support from those people who claimed to take care of me. I would love to go back for a vacation with friends or family to one of the larger cities, but I will probably never return to Lecce.

These recent events have really changed my life plans for the next few years. I will no longer be able to graduate from Northwestern in December since I have to finish the year of language that I would have done this summer. That puts a kink in the plans I had for nursing school and such, but no amount of planning and reorganizing could make me wish I had stayed in Italy. Remembering the anxiety attacks, continuous nausea, isolation, and everything else I endured for my few days in Italy is enough to get me through most anything now. It was simply the wrong place at the wrong time, and I'm willing to make as many life changes as I need to now that I'm safe at home.

It's never as easy as it looks

For those of you who are paying close attention, you may be wondering why I'm making a post when I'm supposed to be on a plane to Philadelphia. It turns out that due to weather all over the country and a huge staffing problem with Northwest airlines yesterday, my flight to Philly was cancelled. After spending two crazy hours running around in the airport and making calls to all sorts of 800 numbers, I finally have a confirmed path to Brindisi. For all the hell it was (which I won't go into detail about here), it's turning out to be a better situation. I have a business class seat direct from Seattle to Paris, and then I go from there to Rome and Brindisi. I'll be getting to Brindisi 4 hours later than I was orginially scheduled to, but I'm leaving 8 1/2 hours later from Seattle.....overall my journey will be 4 1/2 hours shorter! I'm also pretty excited about the business class flight to Paris :)

Right now I'm back at the house I've been staying at in Seattle. My mom and hosts are showering and such since we all rushed out of the house this morning at 5:00 to get to the airport in time for my (cancelled) flight.

Anywho, all is well....and I might even get to catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower :-P

Au revoir!

A Little Bit Relieved

Early this morning I got a 4 page email from someone in Rome associated with my program! It answered the vast majority of my questions about my first few hours/days in Italy...plus some! It turns out I'm going to be staying in a Salentina Masseria (a southern agriturismo, for those of you keeping track) with the rest of the people in my program for the first night. Basically that means I'll be fed home-cooked food, see some beautiful countryside, and be able to get a good night's sleep before embarking on the city of Lecce. They also said that I'll most definitely be in an apartment, although I don't know whether or not I'll have a roommate. (Laura, you may still be the only one to hold that position in my life).

Basically, I'm just really glad that they decided to give me some information about what will happen to me when I arrive.

I have to be at the airport at 5:30 tomorrow morning, so this is probably my last post before I land in Italy :)

Ciao!

I Have An Address!!!

This is the address for the Centro Linguistico di Ateneo - Scuola di Italiano per Stranieri: Via Vito Carluccio, 2 73100, Lecce, Italia.

If you put that in this website, you can find the school with relation to downtown Lecce: http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/europe/italy/apulia/lecce/maps.html

That website has a lot of good information in general. The main part (as opposed to the map specifically) is: http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/europe/italy/apulia/lecce/overview.html

In other news, I'm in Seattle right now - I got here this afternoon. I think tomorrow I'm going to spend some time downtown (Pike Place Market, perhaps?) and then I fly out early Thursday. I think we're going to spend the afternoon/evening doing all sorts of last minute research.

Ciao!

Living Situations

Just a short post to say that I'm quite anxious about where I'm going to be living. All they've told me is that I'll be in a dorm, apartment, or home-stay and that they'll pick me up at the airport and take me to my new home. That's not really enough for me to be comforted about flying around the world. I mean, really.....I arrive in 9 days. How hard is it to have living situations figured out a week and a half in advance?!?!

Final Preparations

Wow - I just realized how long it's been since my last post. Nothing really important has happened in the process of getting me to Italy - I've just been finishing up my quarter at NU. I finished my last final on Tuesday, packed up everything, and flew home on Thursday. After several good night's sleep, I think I'm about ready to tackle the huge list of things I have to do/get before I leave: get adapters and converters, make a million copies of anything that's important, do a ton of laundry, go to 4 doctor's appointments, figure out where I'm going to nursing school..... so much to do in 2 1/2 weeks.

I'll be leaving home with my mom on Tuesday the 26th to drive to Seattle (much cheaper airfare from there), possibly do some last minute shopping or else just hang around Seattle on Wednesday, then fly out early Thursday morning. I suppose there won't really be much more for me to report before I leave, but once I'm in Italy, I will post much more often - hopefully almost daily :)

1 Month

T-minus 30 days.........

Friends!

Today I got an email from one of the other people from my school that will be on the Lecce program this summer. He was asking what flights people were on so he could try to coordinate. From the ensuing thread of emails, I found out that another girl will be on my flights from Philadelphia to Rome and Rome to Brindisi. So exciting!!! Not only does this mean I will have company during my 4 hour layover in Rome (which isn't long enough to venture to the city) but also that I will have a companion when I arrive in Brindisi and am trying to find the bus to take me to Lecce. YAY!!!!

Getting Ready

Yesterday I meet with the coordinator of my program to go over some of the details. It turns out that there are only 3 other people from my school going on this trip - so almost everyone I'm with will be a new face. That's kind of scary, but I suppose it'll be a chance to make new friends. He still wasn't sure what the living situation would be for me - either in an apartment or a dorm, or possibly both. Mostly he just went on and on about all the cool things that I'll have the opportunity to do. Lecce is a smallish city and apparently the people are incredibly nice and welcoming to the students. Also, things don't cost nearly as much as they do in the bigger tourist towns :) The coordinator showed me a tentative itinerary for the first month and there are tons of things going on! We have class Monday-Thursday from 9am to 1pm and the rest of the time is ours. They have lots of activities available to us(movies, trips to the beach, trips to nearby cities, "extracurricular" classes in cooking, stone carving, etc) but they are all optional. For example, if I wanted to take a sleeper car to Rome one Thursday night and have a three day weekend to explore there, I could do it whichever weekend I chose. This guy is the coordinator of many programs that his university puts together and he said that he thinks this one is by far the best, and is half the price of the others.....fine by me :)

So, basically, I'm started to get more excited about this adventure, but I'm still quite anxious/scared.

The Language

At my music lesson this week, my professor and I spoke in Italian for the first 10 minutes. We didn't talk about anything musical, just what each of us had been up to since I hadn't seen him in 3 weeks. He said my Italian was good, which made me happy. It wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I was able to convey what I needed to convey. It was a good ego boost for me since recently I've been getting pretty nervous about how I'm going to do when I'm suddenly plopped down in the middle of a non-English speaking country for 9 weeks.

80 days........

Tickets!

I just bought plane tickets!!!!

$

Well, I just got confirmation that my loan to pay for my summer adventure was approved. I suppose that's a good thing, since it means I'll be able to go, but it's also a bad thing since I now have that much more in loans hanging over my head.

I just have to keep reminding myself that I'll be saving money in the long run since I won't have to pay for another full year at NU.

So Expensive!

Holy crap - why is international airfare so expensive? And I'm not talking about flights to Canada. So sad.

In other news, I spent a couple hours on the phone this morning with various different lenders trying to figure out how I'm going to pay for this wonderful adventure. It doesn't help that neither of the schools involved want to have anything to do with financial aid :(

Oh, the nitty-gritty details that we all know and love....

Deposit and Form

Yesterday I sent in my $500 deposit and Intent to Enroll form. Everyday moving a little closer......

The Program

Here's a basic rundown for all of you who don't know......which is probably a lot of people since I just recently learned all this.

• 8 weeks (in July and August) of intensive second year Italian
  
• located in Lecce, Italy (in the heal of the boot, near the Adriatic)
• course includes optional evening mini-courses/extracurriculars include classes in cooking, stone carving, and paper mache
• the program is international, meaning I will meet awesome people from all over the world and quite possibly have Italian as the only common language
• it will be awesome!!!
  

And so it begins....

Today I got the official confirmation that I have been accepted to the Arcadia program in Lecce, Italy for the summer! It's been pretty touch-and-go since NU decided to cancel their Verona summer program, but after talking to several people in the Italian department here and speaking with the Lecce program coordinator, I think this experience might be even better than Verona would have been.

So this is the beginning of my adventure to Europe. Hopefully there will be exciting adventures and pictures and such.....stay tuned.