Waving Goodbye to Florence

"All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves."

I came across this quote, funnily enough, while I was reading one of my textbooks here in Florence, and I think that it perfectly sums up how I'm feeling right now. By the time you read this, I will have left Florence and gotten settled back into my home in the United States. Thinking about this reality makes me really sad, and I definitely feel like I'm going to be leaving behind part of myself in Florence.

These past four months have been some of the most challenging, exciting, growing, and joyful of my entire life. If you're reading this and you're not sure whether or not to study abroad in Florence at some point during your college experience, take my advice and just do it! I can guarantee that it will be the best experience of your life, and you'll go home a different person. Living in a new culture will stretch you in ways that you've never experienced before. This will sometimes be difficult and confusing, but you'll come out of the experience more capable than you ever were before.

I feel like I've become an adult while living in Italy, and having to leave the place where I "grew up" is really difficult. I'm going to miss everything about Florence. I'm going to miss the smells, the people, the pace of life, and especially the food.

I'm not sure what life is going to look like when I get back home, but I can definitely say that I'll be leaving part of my heart in Florence.

Antique market in Firenze

People-watching in Cascine Park