"It is the journey that matters, in the end"

“But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” 
- Bill Bryson

As I sit here on this beautiful practically-summer Friday afternoon trying to find the words to adequately sum up my fantastically-awesome, beautifully-amazing three months in Florence, I realize it's much harder than I thought it was going to be...

How can there be enough words to appropriately describe things that made me speechless and literally took my breath away on more than one occasion?

Will anything I say truly do it justice?

If I couldn't do more than just look and soak it all up while I was there, how can I even hope to convey those emotions to people who have only seen pictures?

Well, honestly, I don't think I can. BUT, I'm going to try.

These past 3 months have been some of the best of my entire life.

I have made friends I will remember for the rest of my life.

I have made memories that I will hold with me forever.

I have experienced more than many people can even dream to do.

I have crossed things off my bucket list - things that weren't even on the list to begin with. Things I hadn't even dreamed I would experience.

I got home last Saturday evening around midnight EST (about 6am Florence-time) after almost exactly 24 hours of traveling..

I finally got used to the time change/jet lag by Tuesday, but there are still times where I find myself getting tired by 9pm and waking up at 6am..

Everyone else in my program - all the Elon students - left Florence, and arrived home safely, yesterday.

So now, the dream is truly over - but it's never really over.

We will forever remember our time in Florence and Italy and Europe.
No one can ever take those memories and experiences from us.

It was EXTREMELY bittersweet to say goodbye to everyone last week and leave Florence before everyone else..and then have to relive all those emotions again when the rest of them were saying goodbye and getting ready to leave a few days later...

“He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side.”

- Emily Giffin

Now that we all are home, we finally have a chance to catch up with family and friends (and pets).

While I am enjoying being home, and especially being done with school work for the year, I know I (and all of us) will forever hold Florence, everything I had the opportunity to do there, and everyone I met, in my heart.

“Ends are not bad things, they just mean that something else is about to begin. And there are many things that don't really end, anyway, they just begin again in a new way. Ends are not bad and many ends aren't really an ending; some things are never-ending.”

― C. JoyBell C.