Bittersweet

It seems like every step in life is incredibly bittersweet. When I left for Italy, it was the hardest thing I had ever done and also the most exciting. Now, as I prepare to go home, I am more ready to see my friends and family than ever, but also very sad to be leaving Rome and the life I have created here. Looking back on what Ive done and learned, the changes that have been wrought within me are vast and I almost feel like Rome needs to work some more of its magic. I suppose I may always feel that way - we are all such works in progress.
I was sitting the other day and thinking about how attached I actually have become to the school and to my neighborhood and to my roommates and so forth. The great thing about my school, and actually something that would be frustrating after a certain period of time, is the great influx of people coming in and out. Every semester there is a new batch of people from all over! The people who do stay here for a long time form groups that are very exclusive, which my roommates have both taken to since they will be here for four years, but which are easy to evade. There are so many people and they dont bring with them all of their attachments from home - its just that person, raw and new and ready to be changed by the environment, just as you are.
There is something that happens with music from your iPod walking through the main piazza in my neighborhood during this season. All of the vendors come out to sell their arts and crafts for Christmas - different from normal street vendors, these people are in a sort of guild or something and they come out for these sales only occasionally throughout the months. There are children everywhere running around, and everyone in coats with pink noses and the steam from their coffee cups rising. When we laugh, our laughs are visible in the breath that leaves our mouths. At school, everyone is huddled around computers, library full, professors working overtime to meet with all of the students who have questions about papers and finals. The air of stress but of progress, also, is in the air.
For me, in these times when I have lots of school work, I take small breaks but still cant go very far - living out of the school vending machine and relying on my music to take me away from the work at hand has become my speciality. I tend to meditate in these off moments when I think about what I want from life and where Im headed. Its interesting because that notion is always changing but something about it is always the same. I think about how all of us, in college, are headed to be experts in our fields and I wonder if Ill make it as far as I want to go and if Ill be as good as some of the professors I have who simply amaze me. I wonder if they were ever scared or unsure about their futures like I am. I guess they were...Ill have to ask them.