on the last day of school (for me since I had to get out a few days early) my class threw a surprise party for me that went kind of like this
half the class give or take with special guests Jonathan and Lorenzo and Pauline (french teacher that loves me like a daughter even though I don't speak/study/understand french at all)
my little rice princess
what my class did for me (seriously they are the best like my american friends don't do this stuff Y'ALL GOTTA STEP THE GAME UP)
the sweetest gift from my friend Damiano that was snapped in the 'ghetto' of our school
one side of my school
annnnnd the other side of my school
After school ended, well, for me, I had to go to Palermo for the final AFS camp of the year for around 3 days. Camp was....camp. Uneventful and seemingly unnecessary, but I still had a super nice time. I didn't take photos at all at camp, because I just didn't find the time or interest to keep whipping out my camera. Camp was the basic orientations and one major reunion of friends from around the island with 2 trips to the hotel pool and of course, the talent show. I had contacted my friend Paula from Chile a few weeks before camp, because I had found a song in Italian that I really liked and since I have close to zero experience with musical instruments, I needed a guitarist and she was the only person I knew that played the guitar at camp, and played it really well! So I ended up doing not only an act with the girls from my chapter, but also a solo with Paula.
The song I sang was Ligabue's "Buona Notte All'Italia", or "Goodnight, Italy" in English. It's all in Italian and it's a beautiful song!
After camp....let's see.The class "dance" (huge party at a club) was two days after, where I had a decent time but discovered that I'm really not a club person.
Ligabue actually came to Catania for a 2 night concert right next to my house, so I got to listen to a free concert 2 nights in a row. I also went to the beach with my Aussie friend Grace, where I burned. Hard. I had a fun time at the beach though.
In the next couple of days, the World Cup started, which became my new religion. The first game Italy played was against England and it started at midnight our time, the night we were coming home from our friends house in the countryside. Getting home was one of the scariest experiences I had in Italy. We flew. We did stay up until around 2:30 AM to the end of the game, where Italy won....for their last time in the 2014 world cup.
The next few days (I say as I am looking through my various newsfeeds to remind myself the order of what I did, and what I actually did do) were filled with getting together with AFSers and friends. The sole boy from my chapter, Vincent from Hong Kong, had to go home early due to the fact he will go to Canada to go to school with his sister next year, so he needs a student visa beforehand. He tried to go home once, but due to storms in Rome and an eruption of Etna, he was stuck in Catania for a few more days. His last day, almost all of us from the Catania chapter went to the market and picnicked in the city park with the things that we bought afterward. PS....Etna looked like this in eruption:
I'm sorry it's slightly blurry, but it's the best representation of it that I had.
The end of that week, my family went down to a small town called Scoglitti for 4 days. Scoglitti is in Southern Sicily in the province of Ragusa, and we went to stay at my host aunt's house which was right on the house. The 4 days were filled with family time, beach days, watching Italy lose to Costa Rica on a small television with my superstitious relatives, my aunt's birthday, an intense sand castle FORTRESS, and the best food EVER. Here's some photos.
2 live octopuses that the father of my aunt caught in a reef. We ate them about an hour later.
The sunset might have been spectacular every night.
We came home on a Monday.
Tuesday, I took a walk to retrieve my card that was eaten by a bancomat at the city center, and I ran into my Thai friend who was returning two of her friends to the bus stop. So we met up after we did our separate errands and got a gelato, and ended up staying to watch the Italy-Uruguay game at a town square where they had a jumbo screen. There were a good amount of people there (I found out my friends from school were there as well, we just didn't see each other!), and the Paraguayan girl and a German girl who was visiting from her host town up in Turin came to watch the game as well!
The next day we went to make "arancini" (sicilian rice balls) at a volunteers house for our last meeting. They turned out alright but not mind-blowing (ya can't go wrong with deep fried balls of stuff, yenno). Anne, the German girl, came to sleep over at my house that night.
pre breading and frying
Marie and Mook deeply focused
The day after, we went to the beach even though there was terrible weather and it was too frigid to swim...for me. We came home around 3 and my friend texted me to go get "gelato" (you'll see why that's in parenthesis soon). I had to figure out what to do with Anne; bring her with me, leave her at my house, make her go home, because she wanted to go out with me, my brother and an AFS volunteer that evening. So I almost cancelled on my friend, then it all magically, and almost mysteriously worked out.
I was supposed to meet my friend at 6, where she showed up 25 minutes late due to "traffic". Once she arrived, we walked through the park, where there are NO gelato shops so I knew something was up.
The villa's entrance is a large staircase that has a fountain at the top of them, then paths leading around the back of the fountain and up a hill, to where there was a large gazebo. But, you all don't know my background knowledge.
I knew that there would be a surprise party for me at some point before I left. I didn't know when, where, who would be there, or what would go on, but I knew there was the planning of one because my friend told me. It all became clearer throughout this whole process that that was what was going on.
Walking up the paths to the gazebo, I had that feeling that there would be a group waiting for me. Inside the gazebo, there was no one. In the trees next to the gazebo, there was a group of buzzing teenagers trying to figure out how to jump out and surprise me.
I WAS RIGHT, IT WAS MY SURPRISE PARTY. We started out at the park, where we all were reunited for the first time since the last day of school or the school party, they gave me two amazing gifts (a book my friend's dad wrote on a small town in Sicily, ironically, Mineo, where we went around Christmas time to see the nativity scenes, and a 4 part picture frame from Naomi and Paola, two best friends, with 3 pictures of us together and a note). My friend Marco who is probably my closest friend from school that isn't in my class, showed up as well, which was ultimately a surprise for me. A good surprise. We talked for a little because he had to go shortly afterwards.
one of the only photos I have from today because it was a surprise party and I left my camera elsewhere. this is Chiara, one of my best Italian friends.
After leaving the villa, Marco left and we argued like the Italians we are as to where to go next. We ended up going to a gelato place I really didn't like, and apparently no one else really did either because only one person got gelato. We all sat and talked about everything and anything, initially catching up on life and what we are all doing. It's cool because my friends probably wouldn't have ever hung out together in that large of a group without a uniting force. That uniting force being me.
The following step, after losing some more people from the group, we went to the port for sundown. Our group was big so I walked ahead with one of my friends while everyone else tagged along in pairs behind us. Port is pretty beautiful, even though you couldn't really see sunset, it was cloudy so you couldn't really see Etna, and it was super windy and cold. It was still beautiful and a great time.
probably my favorite picture from that night.
We finished the night at a pizzeria that was too elegant for our sweaty selves (we walked EVERYWHERE that night), with probably the biggest pizza I had ever eaten. It was pretty good too. Afterwards, we all walked back to the initial meeting place and went our separate ways.
All in all, the people I have had the honor of meeting in Italy are so remarkably beautiful in all ways, shapes, and forms, I don't think I could ever replace them or thank them enough for all they had done for me the past year. I don't know how I got so lucky to be placed in the 3AL, let alone to be placed in Catania. These kids changed my life and there isn't a day that goes by where I don't think of them. I'd do anything for them because they did anything and everything for me. There's a word called "magari" in the Italian language, and it's probably my favorite. Magari means "if only", or "hopefully". So, to all of my 20 best friends I left behind physically but not emotionally, magari we will see each other all together again. Sooner than later.
That Saturday night, I went out with school friends and AFS friends, and that Sunday (my last Sunday in Italy) my family and our cousins all went out to an island of Aci Trezza, where we had to ride in those boats where you paddle with your feet like a bicycle. We rode out to the island and jumped off, where it was deep but you could see clearly to the bottom. Sea urchins, star fish, snails, and hermit crabs littered the bottom and sunbathers littered the rocks. My brother Mattia dove and picked up some of the creatures, and we swam for a while. We returned home and watched the Great Gatsby.
This was the start of my last week in Italy.
My last week consisted of last minute shopping trips, packing and repacking my suitcase, a very fun day with my Argentinian friend, saying final goodbyes all over the place, emotionally breaking down a lot, and improv get togethers.
My most painful goodbyes came Thursday and Friday where I had to say goodbye to my closer friends. We organized a day of 4 different get togethers and a whole other one Friday morning. Thursday, I started outwith my three girl friends, Irene, Laura, and Federica, where we ate breakfast at McDonalds and just talked for a long time, ending at market. We said our goodbyes there. I returned home after silently tearing up on the corner of the street, ate lunch with my dad and brother who were surprised to see me at home, but was summoned out again not even 40 minutes after I got home by Nano (Argentinian friend) who was stuck in Catania with nothing to do. I went out and rescued him for about an hour and a half, then I met up with 4 other friends. We went to the villa to grab a soda, another friend came, and that was a horrible goodbye. That's when it started sinking in that I was leaving, and that's when we all started crying. Hard. I spent the last hours of my evening with my desk partner from school, Marta, and to be honest I don't quite remember exactly what we did. She ended up walking me home, where we stood under my house for 10 minutes not facing the fact we wouldn't see each other again for a long time. Eventually, I turned into my house and Marta walked back home.
That made my cry on my keyboard.
The next day, Friday, the fourth of July, and my last day in Italy.
This was spent with one of the most amazing people I had the pleasure of meeting on my year abroad and just an all around great friend, Damiano, with our mutual friends in a political meeting of a sort, because they are all in the same group. I met up with Damiano and our friend Sabrina at the place where the meeting would be held, where he rambled on about Sicilian legends in his typical Damiano fashion. We waited for the others there for about an hour until everyone showed up, and we had the meeting. They're all just so naturally funny it's amazing. My friends peer pressured me into staying for lunch, where we walked a couple blocks down to the grocery store to buy stuff to make sandwiches. We joked because it would be my last Sicilian lunch, and we were making freaking sandwiches with chips.
I ended up having to say goodbye to Damiano in the parking lot of the grocery store, because he had to catch a bus to go. It was one of the strangest feelings I've had. Well, with everyone I said goodbye to. You hug them and all the memories you made together run through your mind and get tucked into the back of your mind to be remembered when you leave but not to be lived out again. I didn't know whether to cry or laugh or scream or stay quiet. All I know is I can confidently leave everything I own now and be okay with it because leaving that life behind and everyone in it was flat out the hardest thing I ever have done and I don't know what I could face in these next few years that could compare to the emotional toll that coming back to the United States put on me. Goodbyes suck.
He chanted 'USA! USA! USA!' as we parted through the parking lot. I miss that goon.
I went back to eat with Sabrina, Marco and company and then we walked home. I went my separate way, we all said goodbye, and I returned home for the last time at my apartment in Catania.
That night, I went out to dinner with my family, where they gifted a personally made calendar to me. It was a wonderful gift and a great night.
end of day 303.
Day 304, I went to the airport. On the way I made various phone calls to relatives and friends that I didn't get to say goodbye to. When I arrived, there were at least 100 AFS related people there, all in different emotional states. As soon as the goodbyes started, we all broke down. It was the first spell of hysteria I ever encountered. I cried literally so hard that I had nothing else to cry about so I laughed. I didn't cry not only for the family but for the experience I was leaving behind. Etna shadowed me as I said goodbye to the people I love through the big glass window of the airport. We eventually were forced to go through security because we ran out of time, but it was better than later because the pain needed to end then and there.
Luckily I sat next to Roosa on the plane, where we cried, talked, and laughed together through the plane ride. We landed in Rome and went to the hotel, where I saw all of my international friends again. for the last time. My closest friends made it a lot better throughout the night, where no one slept. Shoutout to Jude, Anthony, Olivia, Josh, and Cole for keeping me on track in the delirium.
5AM was when the Americans had to go to the airport, and we had to say a blithering goodbye to our best friends.
Mini rant: OKAY. So me, being in hysterics, couldn't find Roosa. She had gone off to sleep and I didn't know her room number so I couldn't go wake her up. Eventually I found Andrea and she went to find her, but it was too late. When I went to the bus, I nearly pushed a volunteer out of my way who was literally sidestepping me to keep me from hugging my best friend of 10 months for the last time in a long time. When I finally got my hands on Roosa, after 3 seconds of a hug I was literally pulled off of her by another volunteer.
OKAY I AM SORRY BUT I THEN WENT TO THE AIRPORT TO SIT ON THE GROUND FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF BEFORE THE CHECK IN EVEN OPENED. WAS THAT SERIOUSLY NECESSARY TO NOT LET ME HAVE A FINAL WORD WITH ROOSA FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST.
End of rant. Still makes me mad.
Anyways, the delirium continues after a full day span of no sleep with 2 plane rides and a layover. It's all a blur. All I know is that I landed in the United States at around 5 PM our time (11 PM Italy time) on the 6th of July.
end of day 304. end of my year abroad. end of my second life. fine.
