lucky to have been where I have been, lucky to be coming home again.

BASTA! Took my Italian final yesterday, art history final this morning, and packed this afternoon. Tomorrow is my last day in Firenze, and Saturday morning I embark on my journey back to JFK! A couple final shots of campus:

So, I suppose some sort of conclusion would be appropriate, after all:

″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings."

- Moslih Eddin Saadi

Throughout this summer, I've been thrown theory after theory about art and culture - especially in art history, it's a constant game of categorizing - what does red mean? what does blue mean? What does that really small hand gesture that you can't really see mean? I've learned that although we can theorize all we want, not everything can be put into neat, definite categories. Sometimes, something is wonderful simply because it makes you smile, and that's all the sense that needs to be made out of it.

Italians do what makes them happy - they take long siestas at the most inconvenient times, they organize their day around eating, they drive terribly because they gain no pleasure from traffic rules, buses are late because the driver felt like sleeping in for five more minutes, guidos whistle at girls because it makes them feel macho, the little old man in Bar Lidia takes ten minutes to put a ball of mozzarella on a plate because that's how he wants to do it, and there are saldi throughout the country in the summer so that everyone can afford to look fabulous. Because in a world of anxiety and chaos and deception and heartache and worry, sometimes only what makes us happy can be trusted. Sometimes, only the beauty in our lives, no matter how it is categorized, is real. In Italy, the goal is to live, however obnoxiously, in beauty - to please one's self in whichever manner desired, simply because life is too short not to enjoy it.

Allora, ciao amori. See you in the apple :)

Laura