i miss sicily.
So, just 16 days from today, it will have been a year since I first set foot in Sicily for Studay Abroad. Carolyn and I were talking today about how we can't believe it's been a year since we studied abroad (her in Paris, me in Sicily), and it really doesn't seem like a year except for how "homesick" I am for Catania.
The day I landed is still so clear... after about 18 hours and three flights (Chicago to London, London to Milan, and Milan to Catania), we finally landed at the Catania airport. Just minutes after finding my luggage, a salt-and-pepper-haired man came up to me and asked in Italian if I was Gina. I nodded, and just like that he grabbed my bag and told me to follow him. When we arrived at his little green car, his teenage daughter gave me my first double-cheek-kisses (which I would soon become very accustomed to), and started bombarding me with questions, clearly unaware that I was only used to hearing slow, annunciated "classroom Italian" and could barely understand her unbelievably fast speech. Within minutes, I was being toted down the Catania expressway headed to the home I'd never seen before, to a family I'd never met, but where and with whom I would be spending the next month. And I remember waking up the next morning extremely jet-lagged and slightly confused after going through the possible list of beds I could be in and realizing it wasn't any of them.
Looking back, that first day was terrifying. But I learned and experienced soooo much in that month. Within a week I could understand (most of) the rapid-fire stories Marzia told about how she makes the boys who are in love with her cry. I walked through downtown Catania every day to go to school at an ancient monastery. I went to the park with my host dad and seven-year-old Ettore, I went to the bars with Daria and Marzia, and I went wide-eyed to a grocery store filled with foods I'd never seen before when I went grocery shopping with my host mom every Monday after taking Ettore to swimming lessons. And it was full of small victories--from walking by myself into a bank just a few days after arriving and successfully having my money changed... to chatting with a shopkeeper in Italian during my last few days and having her express surprise that I wasn't a native Italian after I turned and spoke to a friend in fluent English.
And as weird as it is to be "homesick" for a place I spent a month at when I rarely get homesick for my REAL home, I think my host family and the rich Italian culture are to blame. My host family was just nicer to me than I ever expected, and their family dynamic was just unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. And the culture was just so different and so warm, all the way down to stopping at the flower shop to get a thank-you bouquet for my host family on my last day there, and the florist giving me a flower for no reason on my way out.
I'm not totally sure why I wrote this... I guess it was because going back through the memories made me miss it less. Regardless, my apologies to anyone who read through this thinking it was going to be interesting. :) It was more for my own sake. And now i'm off to bed, because i have class in 5 hours.