blupdate.

Well, things are coming to a close at Santa Reparata.  Thursday evening was the student show and since then I have carefully taken down and packed up work.  There is so much of it! The show went well - very mellow. Wine and breadsticks kept us busy.  Artsy fartsy people all over the place.  Here are just a few pieces from my semester:

I didn't stay too long at the gallery.  We had spent two days setting up for it and I was more than ready to be done.  Plus....I had train tickets to pick up for the next morning.  A 4:30am train to Venice had a seat with my name on it.  I was ready for one last trip before leaving.  AND - it would just be blasphemy to live in Italy for almost four months and NOT go to Venice.    I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...but really, it was just a day of beauty.  Nothing overly eventful happened.  It was just simply gorgeous.

Whenever I look at the pictures I just take a really deep breath and let it out slow.  Venice is perfect contentment.  It is absolutely in my top 3 favorite trips with Rome and Cortona.  On the way back from Venice, we had some lay over time in Bologna.  Lucky for us, we caught the Christmas festival!  

And also enjoyed watching ice skaters fall on their bums.

This week I was also lucky enough to spend some time with Marta!  She cooked for us at her apartment this past Tuesday.  We had a blast.  Laughed until we cried, ate like crazy, talked for hours.  We didn't get home until 2am.  She's probably the sweetest, most caring person I have ever met.  And she took good care of us.  We're her "babies."

Right now it's almost 3am and I'm wrapped up in as many blankets as I could get my hands on.  I'm feeling restless and ready to get to the airport.  Traveling home will be one hell of a long day but I'm ready for it.  I have friends here who want to go back to the states but don't actually want to go home.  Every time I hear that I become more and more thankful that I have a truly amazing family to come home to.  They are my best friends in the whole wide world.  I don't know what I did to deserve them, but I'm awfully glad I belong to them.  

It's okay to be jealous.  I don't even think THEY know how cool they are.  

Until next time...

Lovelovelovelovelovelovelove,

Hayden

the right words.

"Everyone has to change or they expire.  Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.


I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die.  I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not read the same page recurrently....


It’s interesting how you sometimes have to leave home before you can ask difficult questions, how the questions never come up in the room you grew up in, in the town in which you were born. It’s funny how you can’t ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize that nothing that is happening to you is normal."


~Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller

the beginning of goodbye.

I woke up early this morning, freezing cold in my room.  The window has been refusing to shut completely so sometimes I wake up to see it blown open.  ColdColdCold.  It was around 7:30 am when I was actually awake and sitting up right in bed.  I've learned to do this sort of shuffle towards the end of my mattress in order to place my feet directly in warm slippers without ever having to touch the tile floor.  I'm 100% certain I look like a loser doing it, but my feet thank me every morning.  

I got dressed, made an egg for breakfast, grabbed an apple and my camera and headed out for the day.  Sam and I spent the morning walking up to San Miniato al Monte.  It was one of the first places we visited when we first arrived (the one with a million steps).  So it made perfect sense to me to start saying goodbye in the place where we first said hello.  Two weeks left.  Two very busy weeks.  That's all I have.  I can't believe it. 

Some of these shots might look the same as they did when I first visited....but I can promise you that everything about them felt different.  I'm a different girl than I was back in September. It was cold but sunny for a while this morning before the sky turned sort of grey. I tried to pay attention to the details.  To the little things I had missed the first few times I climbed.  I don't want to forget anything.  

We passed the Duomo first, which has recently become quite a bit more festive...

Then we crossed the Arno before starting our climb...

I love to walk.  I could walk all day long.  There is so much to see - especially when you are willing to hike.  Someone asked me recently what I am going to miss most about Italy.  And I really couldn't answer.  Everything.  Everything.  I miss it already.  There is an energy here....a feeling....a collective passionate feeling for living.  I'm praying I don't lose it when I get back to the states.  I'm making it my mission to continue being awed by the world.  No matter where I am.  Good or bad... I'm going to find life.  

As much as I hate saying goodbye to this place, I can't wait to say hello to you  :)

Love, Hayden