Hello all!  It's been far too long since my last post, so I've decided to write something up very quickly.  I left you all after detailing my trip to Sicily last spring.  Given how much I had going on during my last few weeks in Firenze, I didn't have time to blog about my last weekend trip.  I had been planning on doing it before finals started, but disaster struck.  The basement of my homestay flooded, and my computer decided to go for a swim.  I temporarily lost everything and never got around to blogging about the rest of the semester.  I did, however, tell each and every one of my friends and family more details than they cared to have heard more times than they cared to have listened, so my life changing experiences did not go untold.

After Sicily, I only took two other trips.  Easter weekend I spent on the Amalfi Coast with some friends through a travel group called Florence for Fun.  We visited Mt. Vesuvius, Capri, Positano, and Pompeii.  After the semester was over, I spent 10 days in Greece on the Greek Odyssey.  It was a traveling seminar course put on by the school.  We went to Crete, Corinth, Mycenae, Epidaurus, Napthlion, Andritsena, Bassae, Olympia, Delphi, Athens, and Sounion.

I wish I could express to you how incredible that last month was.  Between my trips (especially Greece) and the time I spent in Florence, getting on that airplane was one of the most difficult things I had ever done.

My travels continued during this Spring Break, when I went on a cruise with some of my best friends from the U.  We went on a 7-day Western Caribbean tour and made stops in Mexico (where I hung with the ancient Mayans), Belize (where we zipped through the rain forest, jumped off cliffs, and navigated through caves on an underground river), Roatan (a beautiful island off of Honduras), and Grand Cayman.  Though I didn't get my passport stamps like I was hoping for, it was the best spring break I ever could have imagined.

During my semester in Florence, I was (obviously) bit by the travel bug.  After speaking with friends about other study abroad programs they were participating in, I learned about a program called Semester at Sea.  I started talking to a sorority sister who had gone on a voyage that fall, and I started doing research into it.  I became obsessed.  I quickly realized that I wanted to participate in this program more than anything in the world (literally).  After speaking with SAS and my advisor at SU, I realized that it was 100% possible.  It was no longer something I wanted to do, but it was something I felt I had to do.  I knew that if I didn't make it work, I would regret not taking the opportunity for the rest of my life.

That brings us to today, and where my journey in life is taking me.  Tomorrow, I'm putting a big package of visa applications in the mail because I made it work.  Semester at Sea is actually happening.  I reorganized my final year at Syracuse and petitioned all sorts of classes.  I was also granted permission to walk with my class in May at graduation.  I had your typical senior year...the only difference being I will receive my diploma in December after sailing the globe.

I will be posting later this week with more details about my upcoming voyage: what it is, the preparations I've done so far, and everything I have left to do.  Until then..

Abbracci e baci!  xoxo

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