Domani?!

That's right, you heard me. Domani - tomorrow - at just about this time, I will be on a red eye flight headed to Italy! I'll be sitting next to one of my best friends from school, Anna Frappaolo, one of my roommates from freshman year (who will also be my roommate this summer and for the next three years - what a lucky girl!) on the plane, and I'm pretty sure that neither one of us has fully wrapped her head around the fact that we will actually be spending the next 8 weeks in Italy as we travel, eat, learn, eat, and speak very little English (and... eat!). 

To get everyone up to speed, Anna and I, as well as a group of 10 other students, are going to be spending the next 2 months in Italy - 1 week in Rome, 3 in Perugia, and 4 in Vasto, as part of the Harvard Summer School Study Abroad Program! YAY! It's an unparalleled opportunity to explore Italy that I am beyond grateful for and so blessed to have been given!

At the same time, an 8 week voyage overseas is a pretty intimidating concept for me, a girl who has never been outside the United States and hadn't spent that much time away from home before she started college last fall. But I've been in love with Italy for as long as I can remember, and that love just kept growing as I have studied the language for the past 6 years. That's my other primary concern - I'm supposed to be fluent in Italian (at least, that's what my teachers and professors have told me :/ ...), but that fluency will certainly be put to the test over the next 2 months as I struggle to hold my own in conversations with native Italians. 

So I'll be posting here (I'm going to try to do so daily, but we'll see how that goes!) to share my photos and keep you all posted on my travels, my adventures, and the unavoidable funny and/or slightly awkward situations I will undoubtedly find myself in when I accidentally misuse a word or idiom!

[Please note: the posts I will write on this blog will thus largely serve as a substitute for the frequent individual emails updating everyone to whom I have promised to send frequent individual update emails! ;) I will, however, still email you all as often as I can, as well as Skype, time difference permitting! And, of course, I cannot forget to mention the ultimate purpose this blog will serve... Mom and Dad, may the stalking commence!]

;) Baci e abbracci,

Michelina