Nothing about being a study abroad student in is easy, except perhaps, making your friends and family jealous, getting a great panoramic snapshot, and eating well. I have come to believe it is the daily challenge just to get by that gives me the love-hate relationship I have developed with Firenze . Back home I consider myself to be a pretty level person. I do not tend towards outbursts of tears or waves of adrenaline, but this is definitely not the case in Florence . In any given week I can be on top of the world (or Duomo) thanking my lucky stars and enthusiastically exploring the city, or I can be an exact replica of Dante in Santa Croce, stony and scowling, cursing the exchange rate and retreating back to my apartment. I was in the latter mood about a week ago as a result of lack of sleep, overdose of two and half hour class, and that signature of Tuscan spring, rain! I stared longingly at my cozy apartment across the piazza from where I was standing, and angrily down at my soaked flip flops (maybe the Italians are onto something with that whole boot concept), but I had a friend’s birthday just a few days away and I had promised to make a reservation at a restaurant by that afternoon. “Stopping in” to my apartment meant certain failure for this plan as I knew I would not reemerge, so I readjusted my hood and grumbled my way a block over towards the restaurant. As I walked up to the door I recalled one of the only phrases I retained from an Italian word of the day calendar my mom had bought for me the previous Christmas. “Hello” the waiter greeted me, I could barely be seen from under my rain soaked hood and he still automatically knew I was American! I had that temporary moment of “what’s the use?” that seems to strike me every time I try to rally myself to communicate in Italian, but I decided this wasn’t just about me today. How could I let my mom’s $10.99 go to waste? “Buona sera, vorrei prenotare un tavolo,” I recited in perfectly calculated Italian. He smiled and matched me with slow, well articulated, and generously one worded questions. Quando? Quanti? After two years of Italian I am proud to say that I was at least able to rattle off the weekday name, time, and number of people before exchanging “grazie”s and booking it out the door before my luck ran out.

Walking that block back home I felt elated, truly and purely. My heart was beating hard and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, but there was something else; a full body rush that one just can’t get from reserving a table back home. I had made contact. For anyone reading this who is not abroad this all must sound ridiculous or wildly exaggerated, but I promise it is not. The rollercoaster ride of studying abroad is not just based around seeing the Amalfi Coast or the David. Some of its sharpest twists and turns are set by one’s first experience grocery shopping, or trying to find the ‘@’ button on a European keyboard, or, yes, even trying to reserve a table for a friend’s birthday! Actually, now that I think about it, even those first few things I mentioned aren’t as easy as I thought. battling with the ever cutting out Skype in my apartment combined with the two hours it can take to load pictures online can make it nearly impossible to brag to friends and family, snapping that perfect sunset picture requires fighting droves of tourists and my own burning calf muscles up the steps to Piazza Michelangelo, and who can afford to eat out these days?! Yet walking home, soaking wet, with only the promise of homework and pasta with frozen vegetables ahead of me, I am reminded that it really is, somehow, all worth it.