Anika in Italy!: Maggio é un tempo per viaggiare

Time is speeding up again. I have less than a month left of school and then I’m hoping to do a bit of travel before I head home on July 15! It’s been awhile since I last posted, but here’s what I’ve been up to:

During Easter I got to visit one of my closest friends from home, Hannah, who’s also on exchange right now! While my host family was visiting their daughter on exchange in the US, I took the train up to Hannah’s host family’s house in Switzerland for a few days, and then she visited me in Italy. It was a great trip, and we had so much fun to catching up after 9 months apart on separate exchanges! Although we’ve been in different countries, we’ve had similar experiences and challenges. Since we both love singing, we sang all of our old choir pieces together too J

Another highlight of the past month was the Rotary weekend in Cinque Terre, a beautiful coastal region of Italy that I think looks like paradise on earth! Ellen and I took the train to meet another group of exchange students and Rotarians there. Although it’s a touristy and crowded region, I LOVED the landscape. Cinque Terre is probably my favorite region of Italy because it has beaches, mountains, and beautiful hills of fruit trees. It’s also a national park, so it’s clean and has hiking trails through the hillside farms and along the ocean. We went hiking and swimming, and got to stay at the house of a Rotarian who lived there. The next day he took us to Pisa so we had a relaxed day visiting the leaning tower and walking around.

This past weekend was our Rotary district’s last group trip! In two days, we biked 80km through the mountains of northern Italy. I love going up to the Alps, because the mountain towns have a really different feel from the cities here. The people speak mostly German (Italian too of course, but it’s close enough to the border of Austria and Switzerland that almost everyone speaks German) and are more Germanic culturally. The region we visited was known for growing apples, and the bike paths went right through some of the orchards. Beside the path at one point, there was a little wood cabin that had a self-serve apple juice bar! They had different types of apple juice and plastic cups set up, and there was a sign asking you to leave some money in the cash box. The juice was fresh and delicious after biking, and I really appreciated the honor system of just leaving a sign out asking people to leave money in return for the juice- it’s something you would never find in a bigger city like Vicenza. It reminded me of an Amish farm my family once visited in the US where you could pick your own blueberries and then leave your payment in an unattended cash box. Everyone trusts each other.

The trip was great, but at the end it was sad to think that it was our last group excursion of the year! It’s all gone so fast. My exchange isn’t over yet- I have until mid-July- but it’s still strange to think that I’ve been here more than 8 months and that soon it will be time to head back to Northfield. Though I’ll miss Italy, I’m actually more excited than I thought I would be to go home. It’s been a fantastic year, but I’m ready to go to college. One of the many great things about traveling is realizing how wonderful your home is. Until July 15, however, I plan on eating as much gelato as I can, on traveling as much as time allows, and on hanging out with my friends and host family here as long as possible!

Ciao a tutti J