Back in San Diego.

I wake up in my parent's house in San Diego this morning and honestly wonder for a second if the last ten weeks actually happened. I have said it before, but it is something worth repeating. It feels like I have lived in Italy forever, but now that I am back it feels like it was just yesterday that I left this house. I look out my window this morning and see trees instead of terracotta rooftops and wake up to the garbage truck instead of the bells of the Duomo. I wonder what I am going to do today.

I stumble over to my suitcase that I am consciously forgetting to unpack. A bottle of Chianti smuggled through customs, a Fiorentina Soccer Team scarf and a Venetian Carnivale mask are among the things I find. But it's a piece of folded yellow paper from the debris that I am most interested in. I begin to write an email. When I am done, I translate it to English with a language translator just for fun to see how it sounds. This is how it comes out:

"Good day David! How it is?

I call myself Remy. I returned at San Diego yesterday morning from Florence. I studied and I lived in Florence for ten weeks. I have traveling a lot when it lived in Florence. When I visited billy Goats I met your Wise friend. He said you have an Italian restaurant to San Francisco. I live at San Diego but this the summer I will move to San Francisco for school. All Italian things pleases me and I would like worker like a waiter to your restaurant. I have working like a waiter to San Diego for two first years I went to Florence. I studied Italian Wine and Italian kitchen to Florence. I think there better Italy country of the world and Italian and an attractive tongue. I would like to speak Italian with you and to work your restaurant. Thanks one thousand for you time. I will visit San Francisco 23 of May, we are able we met for a work interview? Thanks one thousand David! I am very fortunate because I met with your Wise friend to billy Goats. Goodbye.

To please,

Remington Cox "

I hope it reads more elegant than this in Italian, but the fact that it translated "Your friend Savio in Capri" to "your Wise friend to billy Goats" gives me hope that perhaps the translator wasn't so reliable.

When I visited Capri, Kortney was stopped by someone selling perfume on the streets. His name was Savio. She started talking to him and the topic of his friend who owns an Italian restaurant in San Francisco came up.

Score.

When she called me over, I told Savio I was moving to San Francisco for school this summer and really wanted to work at an Italian restaurant so I could continue speaking Italian. On the aforementioned yellow piece of folded paper, Savio wrote the name of his friend, his restaurant and his email and told me to send him a message. I hope I can work with Savio's wise billy goat friend in San Francisco this year.

I miss Italy so much already. I would be ridiculous though if I complained about having to come back to San Diego. If there is one thing I learned from this trip, it's that you can have grand adventures and learn new things wherever you are in the world and life is what you make it. This, and San Diego isn't such a bad place. I am incredibly lucky to be here. But even if I didn't have the misfortune to come back to such an amazing place, I have realized more than ever that life is all about the way you walk out your front door everyday. You can be just as fascinated stuck in a deserted train station at midnight with no train in sight as you can standing in front of Michelangelo's larger than life David for the first time. At all times for me now simply living is enough. Even though I left Italy this insatiable appetite to enjoy life to it's fullest that I found hasn't. Every day can't come soon enough.

Now if you'll excuse me, there is a piano downstairs that has missed me terribly. I will even brave the cat dander from the two darling felines that I share this house with to have this reunion. There are worse things than itching and sneezing.