Going to Italia

I can’t sleep.

There are several factors contributing to my temporary insomnia; one is that I feel terrible about not updating in so long, particularly after I promised you all multiple updates! I could cite multiple factors leading to this failure, such as Hell Week after Hell Week of papers being due, nightly symphonic rehearsals, getting ready for juries (oh God, the angst in getting ready for juries), and preparation for finals…or I could just apologize and move on.

And move on we shall, for the next several weeks for me and for you, dear readers, are going to be a whirlwind of excitement. At 5:45 in the morning, I am going to wake, shower, clothe myself, and drive to the airport. Once there, after going through security and waiting through terrible lines in the ever-busy airport (note the intended sarcasm) of the delightful town At-Least-It-Ain’t-Alternating-Between-105-Degree-Weather-and-”Small”-Tornado-Storms-Within-Just-Three-Days-Like-Two-Weeks-Ago, I will be boarding a flight and heading off into the great blue-ish sky toward the place I’ve been longing to go to for the last five years—Italia!!!

That’s right, I’m flying to Italy. Tomorrow. Maybe (just maybe) that’s the reason I can’t sleep…

I’m heading off to Italy for a Study Abroad experience of epic proportions. For five weeks, I’m going to be attending a university in Rome, Italy, taking a creative writing course and exploring everything Rome has to offer. And I leave tomorrow. I’m kind of freaking out, if you can’t tell.

Maybe that’s because until these last few days, I haven’t gotten to really process that I’m actually leaving. I’ve been so busy with the things I decided not to mention in this post, like the Hell Week after Hell Week of papers being due, nightly symphonic rehearsals, getting ready for juries (oh God, the angst in getting ready for juries), and preparation for finals, that I haven’t even gotten to enjoy my last few days in my lovely, lovely hometown. In fact, there were very few people I even got to say good-bye to in person, and I definitely regret not having time to say good-bye face-to-face to the following people (in no particular order)

1. The Cello Siren - she went back to her hometown right after our last final, a few days ago. You better be sirening out some new tunes that I can listen to on the youtube! And visit me!

2. The Italian-at-Heart Cellist - he’s probably back in one of those W-states by now; I can never remember which. Wish you were stowing away in my suitcase; I need your language skills!

3. The Triple Threat Brother- I wanted one last chat with you about violin/viola/the mystery concerto (blog post to come soon) before I had to leave! Good luck with Varsity auditions and the State competition!

4. My Favorite High School Girls - You three I’ve barely gotten to see at all this entire year, and I wish we could have hung out one last time before I left. But the rest of the summer…you know it’s going to be epic!

5. The Senator - I didn’t even get to talk to you tonight, and it kills me that you’re coming back to our lovely hometown the day after I leave…I’m calling you repeatedly from the airport on my limited minutes.

6. Every single person I saw Saturday night! That simply wasn’t enough time to say good-bye, but we sure had fun while we could :) See most of you when I get back. Eventually.

7. Everyone I forgot to mention here. I love you all, really! ;) No, but seriously, I’m going to miss everyone I got to hang out with this year. You guys made a really terrible semester bearable. Have a fantastic summer and I’ll see you in the Fall (or, you know, eventually.)

I’m missing everyone already, and I haven’t even left yet! But I think that’s because a few things made it very inconvenient to say good-bye.

First of all, I’ve spent the last eight-thousand hours (okay, maybe not THAT long, but that’s how long it felt) packing. And unpacking. And packing. And unpacking. And so on. Because in the last few days I have had to clean my dorm room. Pack up EVERYTHING in my dorm room, which took so long that I made a vow to fit everything for my dorm room next year into a single car, one trip. The end. Then I had to drive the twenty minutes to my house and UNPACK everything which took the majority of the eight-thousand years. My room looked like one of those small tornadoes that went near my lovely town recently hit the local mall on its way to my bedroom. Upon unpacking all of that stuff, then, and only then, was I able to pack for Italy. Which also took longer than it should have, on account of my one suitcase and one carry-on for five weeks. Organization is difficult, people.

However, packing/unpacking/packing/etc. would have been much more enjoyable if I had been able to contact my friends on a regular basis to keep up my morale and motivation. However, on Saturday afternoon, after my last final, I managed to send my hated-but-needed phone to swim with the fishies. That’s right; I drowned my phone in The Roommate’s toilet.

At the phone’s time of death, I was distracted by The Roommate’s novelty calendar she keeps in the toilet. This present, a disturbingly amusing gag-gift, was a day-by-day calendar with 366 (it’s a leap year, remember?) facts about bodily elimination. Naturally, she kept this in the bathroom, and I was reading the day’s entry when I started to slide off my pants (this is as far from PG as it gets, people; I’ll save the graphic descriptions for my non-existent diary. My phone made a valiant, desperate leap for freedom from my tight back pocket, free-falling into the toilet. I immediately rescued it, but the damage was done. No amount of rice (now sadly unusable, because no one wants to eat Toilet Rice) or drying could resuscitate my poor phone. Sadly, I believe that my phone would rather commit suicide than last another five days with me.

Yes, you read that correctly. I only needed this phone five more days. Immediately upon my return from Italy, I plan on purchasing an iPhone. My now ex-phone, knowing it would soon be obsolete, preferred to spite me with its untimely demise, perhaps hoping that mourning for it would prevent me from replacing it so callously soon. If this was my phone’s dying wish, it was clearly wasted, as now I am in the possession of a cheap, easy pre-paid phone willing to service me until my flight from DC to Zurich (one of my many flights tomorrow on the journey to Rome). I mourn the loss of my former phone, which was often temperamental and unfaithful, very little, and if it had not prevented me from saying a better good-bye to some friends, I would mourn it not at all.

My phone was not the last inanimate object I had to bid farewell these last few days. Today, I drove my last in my wounded but faithful vehicle that has attempted to serve me well over the last several years. Despite its falling-down seat backs, its delightful melted-crayon leather interior, and its driver’s-side-window that refuses to roll down, even after three different repairs, I may miss it. Although it has caused me more than enough grief over the last few years (and embarrassment as well, when going through drive-through diners and bank ATMs with a literal open door policy), I will be sad to see it go. I will be sad in the way that you are sad to graduate from sixth grade, when you know that although you may never interact with some of these people again, you appreciate that you didn’t like most of these people anyway, and are not too sad to see them leave your social sphere. Considering that once I return from Italy I will finally be in possession of my mother’s four-year-old Red Prius, I’m not lingering on regrets for losing my 12-year-old, falling-apart, paint-peeling Honda Accord. But although I am not too sad to see it go, my last ride in old Bessie R.C. was quite bittersweet. (Vacuuming it, however, was merely disgusting.)

So where does this leave you all, dear readers? Am I going to abandon you along with my phone and car? Not in the slightest. My blog is way too new for me to be disinterested this soon, and I’m loving that people are still checking out the site even during my embarrassing hiatus. In fact, I’m going to be in Italy for five weeks WRITING, which gives me even more incentive to fill up this blog with epic posts! There are many things you can all look forward to reading soon, such as book reviews (parts 2 through 7 of my Favorite Book series of posts, in particular), a detailed description of my search for a mysterious mystery violin concerto, advice on how to write a music history research paper, and of course many detailed posts about my time in Italy!

Speaking of posts about Italy, you’ll be able to find these in two different places! All of them will be available on this blog, of course! But if you are interested in reading all of my travel posts in one place without any other silly unrelated posts interrupting them, they can be found on my separate blog, Julia Romes Italia (get it? Get it? Am I the only one who thinks this is clever?) It can be found at the following address:

juliaromesitalia.blogspot.com

So don’t worry, dear readers. I’m going to be updating more than ever (definitely more than once a fortnight) all summer, and I hope you enjoy it!

Until then, I’m going to sleep. Tomorrow, the real adventure begins (after more than 24 hours of solitary travel...)

Buonanotte,

Julia