Home

In 51 days, I will be boarding a plane to return to a place I've come to know as a second home.  My heart lies there.  Even though I've only ever spent one week of my life in Italy, they are counted among the best days of my life.  They changed me. 
It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, traveling abroad for two weeks to study in Italy and France, spending one week in each. 
Now it seems that this has become a twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  This time, however, I'll be living in Rome for two months rather than only two weeks.  I'm excited beyond belief to be back in Italy.  To be back on a rickety train rolling through the countryside.  To be in a pizza shop, shouting my order in broken Italian over the crowd, and the amazing feeling of success that hits when my order is heard.  To be standing inside the ruins of what used to be the emperor's palace, and rebuilding it in my mind.  To sit in a cathedral as a group of monks chant prayers in Latin, their voices rising to the heights of the domed ceiling before showering in echo down upon me. 
I left my heart on that train, in that pizza shop, in the stone of those ruins, and in the voices echoing through that cathedral.
I saw a preview for the movie "Eat, Pray, Love", and the character couldn't have expressed my feelings better.  "I want to MARVEL at something!" she says.  Before I traveled to Europe, life was mundane.  My day consisted of school, homework, fast food, video games, and sleep. 
And repeat.
Those two weeks that I spent in Italy showed me that there's much more to life than that.  There's food.  GOOD food!  And fantastic, friendly people!  I discovered that Americans live in one of the only cultures where a strict schedule has become an integral part of our everyday lives.  We are one of the only cultures who say that there "isn't enough time in a day."  We have to get up, get ready, get to work, get home, put dinner on, do the laundry, clean the house, pay the bills, shop for groceries, and maybe, just maybe, have enough time for ourselves to relax for a few minutes before we need to go to sleep.
Italians don't live such a structured life.  Relaxation, overall happiness and well-being are the most important aspects of life.  There is hardly a sense of being "late" in Italy.  A priest told me during my last visit, in broken English, "If you miss a train in the morning, no worry!  One will come soon to collect you, and take you to where you are going.  You will get there.  No rush.  No problem."
What an absurd way of life, I thought then.  Don't worry about being late?  Are you kidding?!  We have to catch the train, so that we can get to a restaurant to eat a quick lunch, and then we need to get to the museum, so that we can have time to go see the Colosseum before we have to come back for dinner!  We can't just be late.  We don't have time!
And of course I thought that.  That's how I was taught to think.  It took almost the full two weeks for me to discover that this way of thinking doesn't really apply in their culture.  So I tried to fit myself into this new way of life. 
No rush. 
No problem.
Ever since my first taste of that style of living, I found that it was difficult to adjust back to the American "rush-mode" once I returned to the States.  Some one will say, "hurry up, we're going to be late," and I think... what's five minutes?  Why don't we slow down, enjoy the drive?  Maybe take the scenic route?  The party will still be going on when we get there. 
I don't dare speak it aloud though, because I know that the idea will sound just as crazy to them as it did to me a year ago.
I just can't wait go to "home".  To feel like a person again, rather than a slave to time.
No rush. 
No problem.