Before I leave

I’m a little nervous to be honest. I have never been over to Italy before, I have never spoken Italian before, I have never taken a college course abroad before. That is a lot of new experiences packed into five short weeks. A few burning questions that have been stuck in my head for the past few weeks are, what will the city look like up close, will it be easy to navigate for a foreigner?, will I be able to converse with anyone outside of the students in my classes or my professor (such as other Italian students)?, what will taking a college course in Italy feel like compared to taking one in Boston? The more questions that I have, the more excited I am to finally fly over to Sardinia and experience the island for myself.

It is safe to say that I have a rather limited idea of what I should expect from the Italian people and culture. The background for my lack of knowledge pertaining to Italy stems from the few movies I have watched in the past (and it basically consists of a country with extremely friendly people, hot days and nights and pasta, pasta, pasta). I don’t think this is a particularly bad state to be in though; I have so many questions and a general lack of expectations for my Italian experiences that I am so eager to fly over and take in and absorb everything for myself with wide, unknowing eyes.  What I am probably most excited for is being thrown into a country where I cannot speak the language and I have no idea how to navigate the culture; this is the type of situation where it will be necessary for me to leave my comfort zone and interact with new people (probably rather poorly seeing as I can’t speak Italian).

While in Sardinia these are just a few goals that I hope to achieve:

1. Learn enough Italian so that I can form at least one full, coherent sentence
2. Try a new food everyday
3. Explore as much of the city as I can in my free time
4. Understand the Sardinian culture and what makes it unique
5. Learn how American environmental engineering practices and policies differ from Italian ones
6. Take at least 5 pictures a day

I hope to keep track of the goals that I have set and return to them at the end of my trip to see if I actually have reached them all. While I may be slightly nervous and full of questions, I am definitely overwhelmingly excited to be traveling to Sardinia and to be immersed in the culture.