Caroline Meyer

Ciao! Or should I say “hi!” now that I am officially back in the States? Since being home, I have missed lots of things from my time in Italy: my daily (sometimes multiple times a day) cappuccino, the drawn-out dinners filled with endless stories and laughs, waking up to the beautiful Dolomites right outside of my window, the cheap but delicious pizza and pasta. The list could go on. However, I’ve also been cherishing the time I now have to reflect on my study abroad experience–the memories, lessons learned, growth, and everything in between. In honor of the past week and a half of reflection time that I have had, I decided to share with you three things that I learned from my five weeks spent studying in and traveling around Italy. Let’s dive in:

Ciao! As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in my semi-roomy train seat, gazing out of the giant window to my left as fields of grapevines pass by. Noah Kahan is playing in my freshly charged earbuds, and the excitement of arriving at our weekend destination, Cinque Terre, fills my mind. Time here in Italy has flown by as fast as the fields outside my window are passing by. How is it that we are already embarking on our last travel weekend at Cimba?! Venice, Florence, and Vienna feel like months ago with all that has been packed into these past three weeks, and yet the memories are as fresh in my mind as if I had just experienced them yesterday. And what better way to keep them fresh than to write about them and share them with you!

“If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?” This is one of my favorite ice-breaker questions because it not only opens the door for endless conversations, as it did a few nights ago around the dinner table in Florence, but also gives me an excuse to talk about three of my passions in life: food, travel, and writing. If I could have any job in the world, I would want to be a food and travel blogger, so it’s exciting that I’m living out that dream during my time at CIMBA.