Back to it!

I am back from Italy and finally getting settle back into my normal life again. What an amazing, life changing experience. If home is where the heart is, my home is in Italy. This trip was more amazing than I could have ever expected or dreamed of. I accomplished a few fears on the way. Now this isn't my first time out of the country by any means but it is the first time as an adult that I have flown by myself to a random country with no person holding my hand the whole way. Needless to say, I was slightly panicked and that's an understatement. I had to go from Atlanta to Paris, navigate Charles De Gaulle airport by myself and dig up my middle school French classes to communicate with the locals. As my plane got into Paris airspace I shed a few tears of joy. There are a few pictures of Paris on my wall the my late Uncle took many years ago and it has been a long time dream/goal to go to Paris and here I was doing it. Even though I wasn't going to travel through Paris, I was still there. Well, I got a slight culture shock. I found most of the French people I met to be so rude. They had a total disregard and lack of respect for the people around them. After Paris it was time to head off to Florence. Got there and had to get from the airport to the train station. I got a great taxi driver, who got me where I needed to go. Got to the train station and had to get a ticket. Well that was a challenge, I had no clue what the machine was saying, unlike Paris the people in Italy are so sweet. A nice woman saw the desperation on my face and asked if she could help me. I got my ticket then had to find my train, another person saw me standing there trying to figure out my platform and guided me to the right spot for me to board my train. Finally got on the train and had to figure out which station to get off on. I asked an older man, who was so sweet, when it was my stop he came and helped me get all my luggage off and made sure my friends were there to pick me up. the kindness of strangers continued the entire trip and there will be many stories to come about it. People in America don't do these things. You may get help every once in a while but these people went out of their way to help all the time, for no reason. From this I decided to open my eyes to others, instead of focusing on my individual needs everyday.
I experience so much love and generosity. Never have I met people that were so welcoming and inviting for me to truly get the best experience ever. I went with my best friend and her family, from the time I stepped off the train to the time I left they welcomed me to their family. Never in my life have I met people so kind to someone that they had never met before.
I learned so much from the Italians that I wanted to take back with me. I live life so focused on my goals that I forget to relax and just enjoy life and every moment of it. The people there have a motto that will stick with me forever, "We have time for everything." Ever though here in America we do value time, it's almost as though we put too much importance on time. We spend so much time determining how we are going to spend that time that we loss so much time that could be spent with what's truly important in life. Which led me to reevaluating my values in life, what is important to me.
For so long technology has played an important role in my life, it allows me to "stay connected" but to who. I waste a lot of time trying to stay "connected" and for what, to hear that this person is sitting in traffic, that it's stormy outside. Now I am not saying that I am going rogue and completely abandoning said technology but my value of it's true importance has shifted. I will still update my friends and use this technology as a medium to display my art to more people but I will not spend my days wasted at staring a screen that is not going to talk back. I want real conversations with the people that are important to me. I have decided that instead of hiding behind my screen that maybe I should get out there and hang out with these people that I call my friends.
There are 3 things that I feel that have lost there value in my life: Friends, Family, and Food. I just covered the friends part. Family, now I love my family I do, but I definitely don't commit to spending ample amounts of time with them. I see them on holidays and a few more times a year but lets be honest typically it's for some special occasion. During my trip I noticed a trend amongst these people, family is always at heart of everything. They don't dread seeing certain members of their family, if there is something about them that we would consider annoying, it's taken in humor to them. They love to laugh and believe in taking life less seriously. They live life with gusto, something that we are unfamiliar with. During my trip I lost a foundational member of my family, my grandmother. She was the glue that held my family together. If it wasn't for her my family would not gather as much. The only reason why we had so many people gathered together at Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas was because of her. I love my family but never craved seeing them, sad but true. But the combination of my grandmother's death and the experience I was having made me really want to be with them.
We as a society have become so focused on what's not important that we have lost sight of the things that are. We have more of a relationship with our computer than the people that we should hold close to us. I included. I have let so many great moments pass me by to hang out with my computer, and I know I am not alone in this.
Lastly, food. Many of us have a love/hate relationship with food. Why? Food is there for our health, it's not designed for us to fear it. It's there to help us, survive.  Why do we hate the thing that allows us to live? Makes no sense. Italy is the perfect place to gain a new appreciation of food. You go there and you don't think about if that food is going to make you gain weight, you just want to enjoy it with everyone else that is around you enjoying it. And believe me, one bite and you don't care about the calories in it. They don't think about portion control or diet food, it's full of cream, cheese, and everything "unhealthy" but it's natural. If whole milk wasn't good for you then God would have made a cow that produced a less fattening milk. If God made it, it's got to be okay for me, now if man made it I can't say the same thing. No longer will I hate food, I have to eat it I might as well enjoy it while I'm doing it.
There are so many more experiences that I want to share but I guess you will have to wait until I write the book, :)