Story Dust and Wanderlust.

Halloween is just around the corner, so, reader, let's talk about blood and gore.                                                                It was a Friday night and I was standing on haunted ground. The bodies of the infants that had died shortly after birth were buried on this ground instead of a cemetery because they weren't cleansed of their original sin through the sacrament of baptism. But of course I'm referring to something that was done back in the Middle Ages. Now, however, a gorgeous little square that is home to a small 11th century church called Santi Apostoli stands over it. The little gorgeous square's name is Piazza del Limbo, named after the dead children that the Florentines believed were stuck in 'limbo' - you know, stuck in that space between heaven and hell, never finding peace or God's love, but never actually being enough of a sinner to be subjected to eternal torment in hell. I was standing on what was once burial gr

No matter how much I loved being in Italy, every day was not filled with gelato, and skipping down cobblestone streets. No, I wasn't alone, or homesick, or miserable. But more than once, I found myself reciting a quiet litany of "just breathe's." Having grown up in a catholic environment, I have a stubborn habit of seeking comfort in a church or a cemetery. (Did you read my post about finding inspiration in a graveyard? You didn't? You should.)  And lucky for me, Florence has an abundance of them! Living a block away from the Duomo had its perks. I passed it every single day, on my way to class and on my way back; even if I went grocery shopping, or decided to just walk around, it was there. People are not kidding when they say that the Duomo is literally in the heart of the city. Every road, every street somehow led to it. For the first couple of months, I used it as navigation to figure out where I was going and how I was going to get there. The

Have you ever done something stupid enough to throw your entire travel itinerary into complete disarray? If you have, you know the struggle. If you haven't, come on a journey with me to relive what, at the time, felt like the most brutal 15 hours of my entire existence, and you can laugh with me. Or at me.  " Flight 1396, scheduled to depart at 9.05 am has been delayed. Please wait for further instructions shortly, thank you" the intercom at the airport in Pisa blared a little too loudly. The sun, now shining in all its glory heated up my skin through the glass of the windows in the waiting area and it told me that it was approximately three hours past our scheduled departure. Angry passengers huffed and puffed at the ground staff of the airline, but there was little they could do about a strike that had ensued everywhere in Italy. We were fresh out of the stress of midterms and only just beginning to feel the excitement of Fall Break, when we found out the ni

I have always been fascinated with death. Okay, maybe that sentence deserves a little more explanation. When I say I'm fascinated with death, I mean that I tend to wonder, as I'm sure most of us do, about what happens to people after they die. And that subsequently leads me to questions like, what were they like alive? What were their lives like? What were their families like? Did they live life to the fullest? Did they have regrets? This is also why my fascination with death extends to my fascination with cemeteries. San Miniato al Monte is a church in Florence equally rich in history and legend as its more famous counterparts like the Duomo, Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce. Perched atop the highest point in Florence - even higher than Piazzale Michelangelo - on Monte alle Croci, this church went from being a chapel, to a fortress, to a monastery. It now holds a famous cemetery, that upon entrance, feels like stepping into another world outside of our own

Reader, let me tell you, there is perhaps only one other thing better than studying abroad in Italy. It is studying abroad in Italy during a gelato festival. It took every bit of my self-control to keep calm as one of my flat mates, who'd been living in Italy for a year by that point, informed the rest of us during breakfast that there was an annual gelato festival happening that weekend. It was only our first weekend in Florence and I was smitten. The Gelato festival is an 'on-the-road' event; it starts off in Florence at the beginning of the summer, and then tours different parts of Italy picking and choosing the best 'gelatician' and his unique gelato flavor, made specifically for the festival. The tour culminates back in Florence, where, during a three day event held at Piazzale Michelangelo, locals and tourists along with the judges get to sample gelato from each vendor and vote for their favorite. The winner is then honored with the title of 'Be

We were lost. The sun sizzled too hot on my skin for a September afternoon as I peered at the map of the city that the school had provided for us. It's main purpose, besides the obvious, was to ensure we weren't late to orientation. It was 15 minutes past the time we were supposed to be at orientation. We were lost and late. Frustrated, Harry pulled up Google maps. "We can't be that far," he said as we tried to navigate the via' s and the piazza' s without detouring anymore than we already had. The thing about Florence's streets is that they're all so narrow, they don't look like they could lead anywhere. So we would walk halfway down a street, assume it led nowhere, and turn around only to come back full circle or better yet venture on to that very street...but from the other side. The streets always lead somewhere. By some miracle, they always did. Then there were the piazzas that burst into view just as you'd turn a seem

"But wait...which one is her actual name?"  I gawked at the email I had gotten from the school I was to study abroad at with the names of my flatmates, and the girl I was to share a room with. She had four names. FOUR. And I didn't have the slightest idea which one was her first. So, doing what a 'normal' person would do, I frantically tried typing in all of them- each one getting it's turn as the first- into the Facebook search box to make sure my to-be roommate was not from hell. Study abroad is an experiences that you carry with you all your life. It is something that is designed to bring you a step closer to what you want to be. It's safe to say then that having a roommate that you get along with is crucial because the individual living five feet away from you can either make or break your study abroad experience. My past roommate experiences were horrendous to say the least. I came out the other side of those semesters, bruised, battere