The Time of My Life

I saw things I’ll remember for the rest of my life on this trip. Watching the sunset from the Riomaggiore harbor, the vast beauty of the Duomo Cathedral in Florence, the stone walls of the Colloseum and the divine sight of the Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. I could go on and on, but listing it all would fill pages and pages.

It’s hard to articulate what this trip meant for me, all I can really say is that it surpassed every expectation I had and that I feel so blessed to have been given the opportunity to go. Not many people get the chance to study abroad, and the ones that do get the chance often let the opportunity pass them by. To those people I can only say you have no idea what you missed. I can’t imagine a time in my life that was as fun or as enlightening as this. Even as I type this, I want to go back and see all the places I missed with the people I met. I can’t tell you exactly why you should go and do it; the experience I got out of it will not be the same one that you get. It’s unique to every person, but although the things we take out of it may differ, the impact it has on life will be equally as profound.

Before I left for Italy, I had never been on a plane by myself, I had never left the country before, I hadn’t really ever traveled anywhere without my parents or family. I was worried that having to navigate foreign cities and airports on my own would prove too difficult and I would constantly be getting lost. I thought that whenever problems arose like figuring out which train to get on, or finding the hotel, I would just take a backseat and follow my friends’ lead. Much to my surprise, I actually wasn’t that helpless. Are we lost? Where’s the train platform? These were problems we ran into, and instead of following someone else’s lead, I was actually the one taking charge for the most part. When you get dropped in a foreign country and are dealt these sink or swim situations, you grow up pretty fast in that regard. Aside from the more obvious benefits you get from a study abroad experience, the confidence you gain as far as your own independence is concerned isn’t something that should be overlooked.

The most difficult part of my time abroad wasn’t finals day, or being cut off from Netflix for a month, or the stress of having to plan weekend trips while being in class six hours a day; it was saying goodbye. With only 30 minutes between the end of my last final and the boarding time of the bus that would take me from Paderno to the airport, I didn’t have time to digest the emotions of packing up and leaving the place where I had just spent one of the best months of my life. I didn’t have time to take in the moment, I had to quickly pack everything into my suitcase and make sure I got to the bus on time. It’s funny, my suitcase sure seemed a lot more spacious when it was my mom who did the packing. After checking out and getting to the main courtyard, I finally had some time to slow down, and that’s when it hit me that it was all over, that I was going home. The first day I got to Paderno, I wanted to go home. On that last day, I didn’t want to leave.

Realizing you have to leave is enough on its own to make you feel sad, but then all the friends you made start to trickle in little by little, suitcases in hand ready to go home just like you, and that’s when you really start getting hit in the feels.

I never would have guessed that saying goodbye to people I had only known for a month would suck as much as it did. These people were strangers to me when I first met them, but that last day we said goodbye as friends. If I’m ever in Lawrence, Kansas, I’ll have plenty of people to give a call. For the rest of my life I’ll be telling stories about my time in Italy, and the friends I shared those experiences with will always be the reason I smile while retelling them again and again and again. I don’t know if I’ll ever see any of them again, I hope that one day I do. I’ll never forget the times we had, and I’m sure I’ll never experience anything quite like it ever again.

Thanks for reading,

Adam Zogas