Lists

Hello again everyone.

It is January term here at Smith (aka play in the snow time), halfway through my senior year, almost exactly six months after I left Italy, and I am finally getting around to writing this thought I ought to write some kind of looking-back-thing to wrap this up.  It may turn into several posts, because writing one conclusive what-have-you is kind of intimidating.

The easiest way to organize the first one will, I think, be a series of lists...

Things I miss (in no particular order):

1. Emilia's cooking.  For example, her pasta sauce.  I can make something which is not a bad approximation, but without the particular olive oil she uses, it is never going to taste exactly the same.
2. Speaking Italian most of the time.
3. Gelato.
4. The way people habitually greet each other when they enter and leave a store.
5. Informative bus stops.  And the orange Florence buses, especially the mini electric ones.
6. The smell (and feel) of clean sheets that have been line-dried and ironed.
7. Reasonably-priced trains.
8. Really Old Buildings all over the place.

What I have been SO GLAD to come back to:

1. Bagels.  Italy has cream cheese, but very few bagels.
2. Proper snowstorms.
3. Being able to pick up my cell phone and call/text my family for whatever reason without worrying about time zones or long-distance rates.  Ditto coming home for breaks.
4. My friends.  Skype and letters and postcards and the occasional epic journey across Europe are helpful, but it's not the same as sleepovers and stopping by for tea and having people right down the hall from me.
5. Water ice.
6. Smith's campus.
7. The particular look of the stone houses and brick sidewalks in Germantown.

 Things I still need to go back for:

1. The (oldest in Europe) Botanic Garden in Pisa
2. Northern Italy, which I barely visited at all.
3. So my Italian doesn't get too rusty.
4. So I can visit Emilia, Francesca, Eleonora, Monica, Antonio, and everyone else again.
5. More gelato.
6. Bistecca alla fiorentina, which I somehow missed.

 There are definitely more for each of these lists, but that's what comes to mind at the moment.

Other thougts later!