magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

i'm so scared. all alone in someone else's house, and i can't speak their language, and they don't really understand my being vegan, and i'm worried about saying or doing the wrong things and offending them. i feel like i don't really even want to learn italian, that i just want to curl up in a little ball and sleep these two weeks away. i know that this is an amazing opportunity, that i won't get another chance and i'll regret it if i don't take advantage of it and learn all that i can. but i'm so scared.

they've been nice but at the same time i feel completely alone. everything's almost familiar, but at the same time completely foreign. i'm in a little sub-village of a small town twelve kilometers outside the little city of gubio. it's beautiful, and when i went walking earlier to take in the surroundings and sketch a little was the only point today when i didn't feel completely nervous and out of place.

i've only been here for maybe six hours (i have no clock and no sense of time) and i don't know how i'm going to survive two weeks. unless i can spend all day, every day, walking or in the city, sitting, sketching, reading and writing. outside and alone where i don't have to worry about interacting and whether or not every little thing i do will be taken as offensive. or if the next meal will have cheese on it or have been cooked in the same pot as something non-vegan. but part of this is about the interaction, language immersion, the chance to experience family life in a different culture. not to mention that spending all my time alone, not eating the food, and only coming here to sleep would probably be more of an offense than anything i might do while here.

i guess i'm homesick. i've only been homesick a handful of times in my life, in china, in california. but where i'd like to be more than anywhere else is with stef. i've missed her this whole trip, but right now i miss her more than ever before. i am kind of glad that i didn't get a cell phone before this trip, because if i did have one i would need to talk to her every day. and it would have been terribly expensive, and i think that i would feel even further away and more alone after every goodbye.