I am at a point in my life where it seems like nothing is constant. Life has been diminished to a series of endless uprootings and relocations, farewells, novelties. However, although I am left sometimes with an intense longing for stability, I have grown exceptionally good at living out of a suitcase, and, for better or for worse, I have lost the ability to develop expectations.

This idea would not be strange to me if I did not remember each of my birthday parties growing up, with the accompanying anticipatory excitement and the calculated scheduling of pin the tail on the donkey and present opening, and, more recently, the months leading up to freshman year of college, when all I could think and dream about was the glorious life of a university student and the friends I would make and the life-changing experiences I would have. At some point, I unconsciously became tired of my expectations being shattered.

I think it was probably a slow process. My family moved cities a few times when I was younger, and each move warranted a drastic shift in my definition of home. College is but a longer series of shifting definitions, and at some point, expecting becomes draining.

All of this is to say that I thought very little of the months to come when I sent off my study abroad application. Until I trudged behind the other program participants into the foggy abyss of the Venice airport parking lot, I had, somewhat terrifyingly, not thought about the immensity of my decision to live in Italy for four months. I went into this knowing no one and having only researched the area enough to know that it had at least one church and that my homestay was an 8 minute walk from the Boston University campus.

Thus, despite my lack of expectations, my non-expectations were turned on their head. This small city in the north of Italy is, for lack of a better word, a gem. I never imagined that I could so quickly and completely fall in love with a place.

On the one hand, the beginning hasn’t been easy: my Italian is still sub-par– I find myself struggling to find words at dinners with my host family, instead sometimes choosing to remain silent– the city is unfamiliar, and I have yet to develop a routine. The familiarity of the european-ness is counteracted by the immense gap between Swiss and Italian cultures, and I find myself sometimes feeling nearly as helpless as I did in Israel this summer.

On the other hand, though, this first week has been (kicking myself for becoming the cliched study abroad student I have always disdained) more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. I have not only found myself drastically reshaping my concept of Italy but also piecing together scattered parts of my own identity.

It has also felt like so much more than a week. I have made close friends, found what is likely the best gelato in the world, watched the sun set over the rooftops of Venice, seen the balcony from which Juliet uttered a famous monologue, speedwalked through Canova’s birth house, rediscovered coffee, been adopted by the loveliest of Italian families, stood mere feet away from the Italian president, familiarized myself with the twisting streets of the city center, decided to go to Austria on a whim, continued (much to my surprise) practicing violin and running, eaten at a university dining hall with Real University Students, imbibed my first (and second and third and…) Aperol spritz, eaten not one but TWO gluten free pizzas, entered the Basilica of San Marco, a church I had never imagined I would ever see in person, and come to terms with not being able to zone out during lectures in Italian.

Oh, the bliss of not expecting.

~Soph