So, I am fresh out of college. And maybe not all of you feel this way, but I am sure a lot of you do: work is kind of sucky! Maybe the idea of working all day and paying my own electric and water bills is yay liberating....but the more college life drifts away into the archives
of my past....the more I appreciate and miss the years of scholastic labor!
(in the same way I miss the excitement of reading a good book for the first time....you can read it again or put it away for a while to draw out the conclusion, but it will never have the same pristine, innocent and gratifying quality as the first time you read it.)

That\'s how I feel about finishing college. It\'s a little bittersweet, I rushed through it to get the end, couldn\'t wait to finish and now I
realize how easy and fantastical it was- just like reading a book (or if that\'s not your cup of tea, watching a good movie), you\'re at a safe distance from the real world, but experiencing all the technology, history, politics, emotions, science that exists out there....

Well now I am in the real world. Sort of. In September of 2006 I said goodbye to Maine and Marblehead, my two homes, my family and my friends and boarded a plane for Italy. Since I studied here in 2004 I knew I had to return. Meeting someone I didn\'t want to say goodbye to made it a lot easier to come back.

So now I live in Brindisi, in the heel of Italy\'s boot. My life goes like this (in order of importance): I cook three course meals every day, I have a fervor for saints days (no work, no school, lots of eating and family time and the street festival), I live around the corner from a Pizzeria, a fish market, two bakeries, four butcher shops, a 24 hour coffee bar, and a fruit and veggie market. I integrate all the American holidays I can into these holidays (THanksgiving, halloween). I work part time as a teacher for a school located on the United Nations Logistic Base.

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