Ready or Not

Ciao! Welcome to my blog. I will routinely (hopefully) be blogging about my trip to Italy over the next 9 weeks for friends and family to share in my adventures. Ideally, I would have had this blog up weeks ago and been discussing my goals, preparations, etc. about my trip. Well, situations are rarely ideal, college students are busy, finals are hard, and I took a shockingly short time preparing for all of this. Which brings me to the title of this post: "Ready or Not."

First, let me introduce this trip - what it's for and what the heck I am doing in Italy in the first place. I am a student at the University of Utah and wanting to do a Bachelor of Art rather than Science, I needed to take 2 years of a language. I chose Italian for who knows what reason, with the intention of only completing the two year requirement and being done with it. After my teacher persuaded me to pursue the Italian minor degree after my first year of classes, I found out about the language study abroad program that happens each year in Siena, Tuscany. I chose to wait a year after I found out because I knew I wanted to go with my teacher, Giuliana. So now, with two years of language classes under my belt, I'm traveling over there to take some more language classes for my minor, experience a new culture, and gain a new perspective other than that of America.

So where does my unpreparedness come into play? Well, anyone who knows me knows what kind of type-A personality I have. I am wildly amazed at how little I have prepared for this trip. Of course I planned the necessaries: figuring out housing, payment, plane flights. But on the other hand, packing and planning the details of my trip were minor in my mind. The me from two or three years ago would have been looking into airport maps for each connecting flight, researching the exact cost of trains and taxis, and planned each movement from here to Italy down to the tee. Maybe this attitude has come with age or maturity, but there is a unreal peace that I have with leaving the U.S.; with everything going as it should despite the unknown that I'm looking into. I'm literally about to board my plane to Italy from New York (and I really want something to post before I actually get to Italy) so this is rather rushed, but ready or not, Italy, here I come.