This morning I woke up homesick. I don’t even especially like thanksgiving but all I could think about was being farther than I’ve ever been from my mom and sister in a hostel with shotty internet no less so I can hardly even skype them. But I also thought it would be a good opportunity to take stock of everything here I have to be grateful for. Being here for four months, with plenty of time to get settled and even plenty of time to “do nothing,” I occasionally almost take being abroad for granted. But this once in a life time experience is just that, a special opportunity that I feel fortunate to have been given.
This semester has made my dreams come true. I’ve seen baroque palaces, medieval castles, gothic churches, pubs and clubs in abandoned buildings, hundred year old apartment buildings, the homes and studios of Renoir, Picasso, Toulouse Lautrec, and royal families from several different empires, futuristic architectural giants, historical monuments, the memorials of WWII’s tragedies, ancient artifacts, paintings I’ve read about, museums I’ve always wanted to go to, museums I’ve never heard of, graveyards where great masters of art and literature are buried, an opera, a ballet, a concert, a burlesque performance, a soccer game, straight plays, musicals, skylines, country sides, street art, mountains and people who I never thought I’d find so special and interesting.
It’s difficult to describe what being here has meant to me so far because I can hardly remember my mindset before I came. I did very little planning and had very few ideas what I was in for. Nothing can fully explain the feeling of seeing something you’ve never seen before and I feel especially grateful to come from a place where there is so comparatively little. I love Vermont but it is small and homogenous compared to a city (let alone a series of European cities) and I am thankful to get to call each new day here a discovery. I remember taking it for granted that I would never stop being amazed at all the new things I saw and I am the most thankful for the fact that that is still true.
Alli Green
<p><span style="color: rgb(29, 29, 29); font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(237, 237, 237);">Having grown up in rural Vermont, Alli Green now studies art history and studio art at Skidmore College. She stays active on campus by working as admissions ambassador, a tutor in Skidmore’s writing center, and looks forward to assistant costume designing the theater department’s main stage production in the spring of 2014. Her ambitions include pursuing a master’s degree in either art history, museum studies, or library sciences, exploring opportunities to work as a field archeologist, illustrating children’s books, and contributing to the making of movie magic as a costume designer or special effects makeup artist. In the meantime, she is content to get excited about books, movies, art, history, and learning everything she can both while she is a student and after.</span></p>
