Split

I've spent the last few days vacillating between being excited and having anxiety attacks.

We're leaving for Italy on Saturday. We've only been planning this trip for over a year, so you'd think I'd be totally prepped and anxious to go. Oh, I'm anxious alright. Unfortunately, it's not a good kind of anxious.

I know we'll have a good time. I know I'll love Italy and wonder what took me so long to go there. But I'm still going to a country that I know very little about and speak very little of the language. I've been practicing "No copisco l'italiano" (I don't understand Italian). We'll mostly be in the large cities, so most people will probably speak English, but I want to know somethings to say to be polite. Buon giorno, gratzie, prego, due cauppacino per favore. Now if I can just figure out how to say, "Do you take Visa?" in the shoe store.

The main reason I'm on edge is that it seems the more I read and try to figure out what to do and where to go and how to get there, I just get more confused. My brain doesn't seem to be able to differentiate the names of places and everything seems to be a variation of Piazza. Plus, there are 3 other people going on this trip, but I seem to be the only one who knows how to read a travel guide. Granted, I'm the most anal of all of us, but you'd think they'd want to know something about where we're going. I can see it now: we'll meet downstairs at the hotel and all 3 of them will say, "What are we gonna do? Where are we gonna go? How do we get there?" Actually, it may not be that bad since I went through the guidebooks and emailed everyone about what days the museums are closed and suggested when we should do what. At least there will be 4 of us to figure out the public transportation and that's good because I'm really stressed about figuring out the public transportation.

I've already had a friend talk me down and tell me to get a grip. She lived there for 6 months, so she was a big help in making me feel more excited than anxious.

So, I'm just gonna roll with it. I figure that since I haven't seen anything in Italy, that anything I see will be amazing. I'm not taking a list of things that I have to see and do. And you know how hard it is for me to not have a list, but this will be very good for me.

So, arrivederci amici. I'm off to sort through all my little toiletry bottles and to practice pack. I have to make sure I leave room for the shoes and purses that will be coming home with me.