Week 16: Veni. Vidi. Vici.
I came. I saw. I conquered.
How I feel about this past semester...except I guess we won't quite now about that last part until finals are over in about ten days.
The majority of last week was spent recovering from Paris and studying for our first final, Turkish! But this past weekend, I spent about 36 hours in Rome seeing and doing as many typical Rome things as I could. This included: walking around (and getting lost) in Vatican City, seeing the Pope (granted it was pretty far away, but I have a picture of his floating head among the masses of people!), enjoying the largest "small scoop" of gelato in the world, walking through the Coliseum and the Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain (unfortunately under renovation), finally eating Italian food in Italy, running up and down the Spanish Steps more times than necessary, watching the sunset from Pincio/Pincian Hill, strolling through the Piaza del Popolo to the soundtrack of street performers singing their hearts out. I'm always amazed by how much can be done in a day (all of the above taking place in less than 12 hours).
How I feel about this past semester...except I guess we won't quite now about that last part until finals are over in about ten days.
The majority of last week was spent recovering from Paris and studying for our first final, Turkish! But this past weekend, I spent about 36 hours in Rome seeing and doing as many typical Rome things as I could. This included: walking around (and getting lost) in Vatican City, seeing the Pope (granted it was pretty far away, but I have a picture of his floating head among the masses of people!), enjoying the largest "small scoop" of gelato in the world, walking through the Coliseum and the Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain (unfortunately under renovation), finally eating Italian food in Italy, running up and down the Spanish Steps more times than necessary, watching the sunset from Pincio/Pincian Hill, strolling through the Piaza del Popolo to the soundtrack of street performers singing their hearts out. I'm always amazed by how much can be done in a day (all of the above taking place in less than 12 hours).
I am still a bit amazed by how normal it feels to spend weekends in airports and random new cities and countries. It will definitely be a bit of an adjustment coming back to the States (an adjustment I definitely look forward to). At the end of the day, as amazing and thrilling as it, traveling is pretty exhausting and a bit stressful. For the past few years, I've put this unrealistic pressure on myself to travel the world and see and experience absolutely everything. I still think this is an admirable goal, but for some reason I have been working to pursue it as if there's a ticking time bomb on my head. Sometimes it takes a weekend in one of the oldest cities in the world to recognize your youth. The world is a beautiful place, filled with gems of culture and history waiting to be discovered. But it isn't going anywhere. Adventure and discovery will still be out there five months from now, five years from now, and even fifty years from now. Despite the stress-induced gray hairs, I think this is a lesson I could only have learned after pushing myself the way I have this semester, and I am pretty sure it's a realization my parents are thrilled about.
(Also, today--May 19th--is Ataturk Remembrance Day in Turkey!)
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