Reconnecting with Family: Florence and Venice

March 13th - Florence, Italy

Spring break left me, as the Mexican saying goes, with my heart swollen, full of happy memories, and with the honor of having both of my parents visit me in Italy. My dad has never traveled overseas. Despite giving my mom and me multiple opportunities to go, he has never taken more than four days off, much less a whole week. So having him visit me and take a week off work meant everything to me. Even more, it meant a lot to me to help them navigate the Italian language throughout the week. Our first stay was in Venice, where I had the pleasure of giving them the same tour of St. Mark's Basilica as I had given to the class. In a way, it was a way to show them how much I had learned in the time I've been away, with the chance they gave me.

Our next stop was Florence, where we met up with our friend Giulia, who was our tour guide in 2021 and with whom we kept in touch on social media from time to time. It was a very beautiful moment to meet up with her again. We talked as she gave us and my dad a tour of the city. We both acknowledged that, back in 2021, when we met, I told her how much I wanted to study there, and now I have the pleasure of taking her tour again as a student in Italy. Back when I took her tour the first time, I was a Political Science major, not yet considering adding English as a minor, so this time around, I was able to appreciate details such as Dante's connection to Florence much more than I had before. Knowledge deepens our enjoyment of things and makes the city glow so much more in my eyes.

When my parents left me at the Rome train station before they headed to the airport, I felt like a little kid all over again. When we'd have recitals or some event in school and my parents would go see us (usually around midday), I'd want to leave home with them. There was always this fear or desperation of not knowing if I'd see them again in my dramatic child brain that somehow creeped its way back into the moment I had to walk to my train platform. I left with my heart swollen, but broken at the same time in realizing that to walk towards something sometimes means also walking away from something. But when I expressed this to my parents they reassured me that just in the same way I'm walking in this direction, there's always a road home where they'd be with open arms. Their words became my fuel for the rest of my stay.