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Trip Start Sep 15, 2009 Previous
Entry Trip End Nov 15, 2009

  Reggio Calabria, Calabria, Italy
Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Sometimes I let myself wonder, not always a good thing but regardless an effort I must make. I wonder if things are going to feel different when I get home, if I will view things in a different way.  I have already made some discoveries about the differences between Italy and Canada that I love, and like, and don't feel all that warm and fuzzy about, and no matter what it leads me towards, I always seem to come back to the same thing.  I want my home, I like my home, and I don’t think I could leave it for any…extended period of time, say indefinitely . 

But then I am reminded, by my brain, the thought I would wake on my 16th birthday, a different person, with a new mind, with some different crazy wild perspectives (teenagers, what do they know!), the same on my 19th, maybe I’ll even admit to my 20th … and unfortunately I was repeatedly disappointed.  I wasn’t any different than the day before and I really knew better then to expect one day, one day that was just like any other to really affect me in such a drastic way for no reason.  But now I am nearing middle age (ha!), in Italy, experiencing something unfathomable, to me.  And I have One Week Left.

I don’t know if it is my impatience. Or if it’s just that I’ve had enough but I’m Done Like Dinner.
Maybe I have a lack of truly being able to live in the moment, I never thought about that before.  I am always moving towards the next phase, the next process.  When I was leaving, I wasn’t allowing myself to enjoy the process, I was stressing about my apartment, and my new job and my friends dog.  Even while on my trip (this is a natural thing I hope) but I was constantly concerned with where I was suppose to go next.  Did that somehow damage my experience where I was?  Did it prevent me from truly enjoying what I was surrounded by?

There have been many unexpected moments too, things that I don’t believe I would pass up even if they were difficult or induced loneliness.
I worked, and complained about it, but I wouldn’t take it back, I had a lot of fun those two weeks, more then I had anticipated.
I made plans to go to Cinque Terra, not having it on my original list of places to go, and it turned out to be one of my most favourite, cherished places I went.  It was so beautiful I cannot do it justice.
I arrived in Sant’Onofrio and sat around a bit, with limited means of communication, and found myself often frustrated with myself but I was able to see my family, and where 'we’ come from, what we came from.  I met my Zia Tina’s mother, and then I attended her funeral, being included in the family’s grieving process within her home for three days, this had me experiencing something else intense, buried within another culture. 

And yet, here I sit, with one week left, thinking about the departure.  Craving it almost.  I would like to indulge myself and believe that it would have been different if I came earlier, so that the cold weather wasn’t responsible for deterring me so much.  But I will never know.  All I know is that now, I am ready to go.  I have, I believe experienced a part of Italy that will always be mine. I will always have it with me, whether I wake up tomorrow, or the day I get home with a different face or not, I did live it, I breathed it in, I took it into my soul.   But yet here I sit, willing it to be Sunday.  I must be crazy!

Benita

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