Life Since Florence

As any follower of my former blog, Thoughts From Abroad, knows I spent a year in Florence and am now back in Madison, WI finishing school... well attempting to finish school. It was been such a strange transition since that time but I am settling in alright, though there were many bumps in that road.

Coming home was a huge cultural shock and I didn't prepare myself or expect it to be that bad. I thought it would be, in many ways, a good thing. Back to the normal, back to the expected, and back to the convenient. However, as nice as that sounded when I was throwing myself against language barriers I was completely and utterly bored as soon as I set foot on US soil. There is no adventure in life among people who speak your language!! If that wasn't bad enough I had to go from learning about art and history from some of the most respected in their fields to summer school and the Survey of Botany. Suffice to say, it was pretty bad. But I muscled through, got 3 science credits and moved on to History of Germany since 1871..... yea, that's all the BAD stuff. So if it wasn't depressing enough to simply be back in the States, the Holocaust just made it that much better. But once again, you power through and I did!

Then some good stuff happened, I got to go home, relax, hang out with Mom, I even went to a horse show! Didn't ride but got to see all these people from what seemed like a past life and it was amazing. So much fun... and though I scared Mom with thoughts of buying a horse again, I stopped myself and just enjoyed the day. After spending sometime at home with friends and family I headed to New York to try to recapture some of my traveling spirit and it was so much fun.

I hung out with friends from last summer at Sotheby's, caught up with one of my former bosses, met up with a bunch of friends from Florence and just had an incredible time. I felt myself realigning both the Florence Me and the US Me and they finally seemed to fit together. It was a great experience and I hope I can hold on to it for a long time. But of course there aren't just people in NYC there is ART!

Will continue this later, have to run.. off to see New Moon.... don't judge me!