Alice in Wonderland

Three weeks in and it still doesn't feel real that I'm here. My brain is having a hard time with the whole "location" thing in general though: when I dream about being in the States with my family, it always happens in Watkins...where we no longer live. When I occasionally imagine arriving home from the airport, I picture myself unpacking in my loft room on the lane in Pennsylvania, even though I haven't lived there in over a year. Honestly, I feel disconnected from my life in America, like I'm a different person here in Italy than I am there. Maybe I am.

My conception of time is starting to return, though, and I'm developing some sense of routine so there's hope I'll soon stop living in wonderland. The amazing thing about life here is that routine, along with school and work, involves traveling. I've already ventured over to Udine—the second largest city in the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region (akin to a state)—twice. The first time Caitlin and Lia joined me, the second time we took the students—because, like any good home schoolers who have grown up and are now living on their own, we had discovered things our students needed to see that would enhance their education and their very lives.

Seriously though, history at its most basic, whether its in the form of a written contract or two bricks slapped together or a stroke of paint, makes you realize that life is much bigger than you. If you can learn that lesson, you will do well. I have yet to learn that lesson, so I'm still chasing opportunities to teach and reteach myself.

This weekend we—as in most of the students, myself, and another short-termer with Saints Equipped to Evangelize—went to Vittorio Veneto. It's a cute, sizable town that, due to its location in the foothills of the Dolomites, has some great hiking. I was thrilled because the trail we found was a legit hike. The last time I was in Vittorio Veneto, over a year ago, we'd looked for this certain trail but couldn't find it. We found another trail, but it was more of a cobblestoned switchback that wound up the side of the hill, ending at a cafe; and though it made for a lovely climb and had a nice view at the top, it wasn't quite what I'd had in mind. Across the valley from there, we could see another hill with a cross and Italian flag at its peak.

Yesterday, then, we climbed to the cross and I got the hike I'd been looking for. It was lovely to spend an afternoon in the woods, sweating it out with everyone. It made for a nice change of pace. We get to do so many different things here, and whether its getting dolled up for a night on the town or hauling yourself over one more boulder and coming eye-to-eye with a massive panorama of north eastern Italy, I love it all.

By the end of the day, admittedly my shower felt really good. However, I was a lot more mentally drained than physically fatigued. Engaging another culture—though immensely enjoyable—is kind of hard, at least for me. There's so many things to experience and absorbing it all leaves me at once mentally overwhelmed—and yet also content, because I love the culture I am in. But since it's not the culture I've been living and breathing for 21 years, I can't get all Nike and "just do it," I have to "try and just do it." Once again, I like trying, but trying is hard. I try to speak Italian, try to read train tables, try to be on time, try to make sure I'm getting fizzy water instead of flat, try to pay with exact change, try to not break invisible rules of life or concrete rules concerning traffic...try to admit defeat, and in the process make an Italian laugh at me and then discover a moment of friendship because Italians are cool and give a nod to the fact that I'm trying a bit even if there's no denying that I'm an American, here for only as long as Schengen policy will allow.

I'm also trying to know when to let my guard down and turn it all off and soak a moment—whether people or a pretty scene—through my skin and into my bloodstream so it becomes a part of me and stays with me longer than this short three months that I'm here.

It's a good thing I have SBI to come home to and get to be here most of the week keeping campus running, hand washing laundry, and writing essays, and staring into space waiting for the wifi to work, and having a couch to flop onto like a deadbeat, because otherwise I'd explode.