Sigh...

Now that my guests are gone the homesickness has finally hit me. I have a “glass half full” kind of disposition so it’s hard for me to feel really down but I’m just lonely. And the other day I spoke to the Signora (at my pensione) who told me that both of her B&Bs are full from Friday-Sunday so I have to find a place to stay for those three nights—the added stress of looming homelessness in a foreign city is not helping matters. She offered for me to come back on Monday at a substantial discount on the nightly rate but the room would still be out of my budget. Plus the fact that there’s no internet, TV or kitchen kind of sours me on the whole place.

So in a nutshell I have no friends, I’ll be thrown out this Friday and I have yet to figure out what the heck I’m doing here in the first place. But the thing is I live for these kinds of life experiences so I can’t help but feel excited at the same time. I’m happy that the city is starting to make sense to me (I often find myself looking up to find that I know exactly where I am and how to make my way back home without consulting my map) and that each day I’m beginning to feel less like a tourist and more like a local. I’m grateful for the people who are making an effort to help me integrate and build a life here (one of my blog readers set me up with her Italian friend and we met for drinks last night. She was with her American boyfriend who lives in Barcelona and they were both really cool, interesting people. She invited me to dinner at her house and is even planning to introduce me to a couple of her single male friends… I won’t say no to that! lol). I’m glad that my classmates seem sort of interesting (specifically a woman named Anna from Brazil) and friendly. I’m grateful for my budding friendship with a cool guy from Brooklyn (a documentary filmmaker here on a 3 month assignment) who is game for just about anything involving alcohol and will accompany me to check out all the bars I don’t feel comfortable hanging out in alone.

The thing about life abroad is that you make these fast and fleeting relationships, which can be really significant and intense and exciting. But on the other hand it makes you realize how far from your old life you really are. Not to make it seem like things are all bad though. I get these little bouts of self-pity that I like to dip my toe into once in a while but 90% of the time I’m pinching myself that I actually get to live here in this incredible city. And my social schedule is filling up nicely. Tonight I’m meeting a new Italian friend for drinks in a neighborhood outside of the center that I’ve never visited before. Tomorrow I have an invite to a dinner party hosted by woman (a black singer from New York) I recently got in touch with through a long chain of email introductions. Saturday night I’m partying with a Roman guy I met through my friend Temi in London… ok, pause. I’m being absolutely ridiculous. (Writing is cathartic) Pity party officially over :)

Two years ago I moved to Paris to find my joie de vivre and now I get to experience la dolce vita in Rome. I'm owed some injections of harsh reality every now and again. Didn’t someone once say that too much of a good thing is bad?