Foodie's In Florence!

Today I find myself back in Italy, despite the last post noting "The End." However, if you look closely to the end of the ultimate post, you will see that I wrote that I would never give up wanting to live in Italy. Well, almost 3 years later, and during that time some hard work and personal transformation, I am here again. When I first returned to the states, my plan was to make a lot of money waiting tables and then get right back here. Well, I got a little distracted. I was a fresh college graduate and I had the the urge to develop myself professionally. And I am glad that I did, because now I have some sort of direction and a higher skill set for this challenge to make an Italian life happen. In the last few years, I developed as a sales and marketing multitasking event planning social media networking machine. I also got steered in the right direction into the food and wine sector. I started taking food and wine pairing classes at a local wine academy and an opportunity came up to study food and wine pairing in Italy. I applied for it and not only that, won 2 scholarships to make it happen without incurring even more student debt. In the last almost 3 years, I also managed to obtain an Italian passport and European citizenship thanks to my Italian heritage. So I decided to get a one way ticket, do this program and see if I can truly live in Italy. People ask me "How long do you plan on staying?" My response remains: Until it's not fun anymore.

So we shall see. This is the biggest experiment that I am putting myself through. Lots of friends and family are rooting for me, I know. So many people came out of the woodwork to support this decision, so on some level I think this is part of my path. There are strange moments, for sure. Only time will tell. In some strange moments when I think I left a good life behind, I think of the wise words of one friend who was also very encouraging: "you're only going to make yourself more marketable and more qualified by doing this. There's nothing you can't come back to." So those words do comfort me in my moments of concern.

When I first arrived in Europe (I got to play in Germany for a week) I thought, "Man, only 2.5 years have passed?" then I got to Italy and I realized, "Whoa, it's been almost 3 years." Everything I thought I knew about Italy is sort of outdated and the crisis is felt here stronger than ever. And the air of passion that I once fell in love with seems to feel stagnant. Italy feels different and I feel more like a stranger than I ever did. I realized how much I've changed in the last few years. I'll end on this: my relationship with travelling back and forth to Europe, as I 1st came to live in London in 2005 and have came back every year or two to either vacation or study, is like a case of a good ageing wine. A true wine fan will buy a case like a Riesling, and enjoy a bottle every 2 years to see how ageing has affected its character. So I will continue to taste this bottle and see how it compares to the last and if it's worth finishing. Cheers!