Alla Fine

Ciao tutti! Sono negli Stati Uniti con la mia famiglia, pronto per una vacanza! E sono felice.

Anyway, my written grammar isn't good enough to sustain a written blog in its entirety, so here we go in English!

I'm back in the United States with my family; life's been pretty relaxed for the past two weeks, but next week the real work starts. Internship time!

My stay in Italy was absolutely amazing. My spoken Italian became very good, as well as my listening and reading skills. I never got too great at written grammar, but that didn't stop me from writing a twenty page conference paper in Italian for my language class. (It was based on the Decameron, which is the Italian story that Chaucer read and based his Canterbury Tales on). Surprisingly, my other two conference papers were in English, so that was much easier than I had thought it would be. I finished the papers two weeks before they were due, giving me the much needed time to study for my art history exam (at least 1,200 slides, each with artist, title, material, location and date to memorize for the 12-slide/three short essay exam) and Italian exam (exams!?! for an SLC student!?!) . Both went rather well, I like to think. I have yet to get back my evaluations, however, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

All in all, the year finished up well. I loved my Italian class (which I expected to hate), made great new friends (most of whom are American...), and now have an Italian family that I love deeply (and hope to go visit often).

The trip back to the states was uneventful. I cried when I had to leave Giovanna, my Italian mamma and best friend while I was in Italy. (I cried again when, halfway over the Atlantic, I opened the gift that Giovanna gave me before I left.) I watched Slumdog Millionaire (way to go Danny Boyle!), slept and then was home. Oddly enough, on the flight I was seated next to a girl who had studied in Spain and knew a girl--not only from SLC--but from the SLC program in Florence. As there were 18 of us in total, I guess that proves that it really is a small world.

Now that I'm back in the states, I hope to see you all soon! There may be another blog entry with pictures (so keep checking back here!), but that really depends on if I ever unpack to find my camera....