Chapter 3: Napoli (Pizza, Sunshine and Neopolitan ice cream)

While here, I keep feeling very clear shifts of time. Chapter three of the journey has definitely occured. It's no longer the beginning, it's no longer the first exploration, life here has become normal, natural. I awake and I feel that everything is in its place. I look forward to my days, I look forward to seeing my friends and the adventures that we will have. Overall, Rome, Italy, has become home. The idea of life in America feels so far away, mentally and physically.

This weekend, after taking a break from studying for midterms and applying for internships we went to Naples. Our friend Joe had already been there and kept raving about how wonderful it was. I had heard very mixed things about Naples. "It's so dirty!" "You'll get all your stuff stolen." "The pizza is incredible." Obviously, I had to go find out for myself. And my stance on Naples, is that it is wonderful. It's a real city. It feels alive, so much so, I thought the cars were going to run me over. It's very different from Rome, which I wasn't expecting. I suppose Napoli is just a bit rougher. But it's charming and I really enjoyed myself.

I did have the best pizza of my entire life. It was called the Carmela - sausage, mozzarella, and spinach. But what makes the pizza is the dough. It's incredibly fluffy, but extremely thin, with amazing flavor. You can just tear the pizza, it's so delicate using a knife just seems wrong. I want to go back to Naples just so I can have more pizza. We got to Gino's just as it was opening and by the time we left there were probably 75 people standing down the street waiting to get in and eat.

Of course I also had to get neopolitan ice cream in Naples too. "Voglio cono piccolo con chocolato, fragola, e crema." Delicious. Megan and I had it melting all over us, but it was so worth it.

Then we found these rocks right by the sea. We were there for over an hour, just relaxing, taking in the breeze, the sun, the sounds of the sea. It made me so happy. That moment will for sure go down as one of my favorites of the whole semester. It was just pure happiness. We each climbed down the rocks to stick our feet in the water. Megan was the first to go and a huge wave hit her, she was drenched for the rest of the day until we went to Zara and bought her new clothes.

Laying in the sun, listening to the waves made me that much more excited for Greece and Malta. My weekends for the semester are now booked. This is helpful because I have everything else planned out and can just go with the flow.

I really cannot believe it is March. I leave for Africa in just over four days. Amazing. I can't even wrap my mind around it, but it is for sure to be an incredible experience. Time here is a funny thing, I feel like my days fly. I think time overall moves so fast. But it's so hard to describe my life to people at home. I try my best to put it into words, but I don't think it will ever make sense. It wouldn't make sense to me if I wasn't living it. I'm just so happy to be able to have this experience. I know this is what my parents have always wanted for me and thanks to them it is possible that it has happened. Every day I am more and more grateful to have these experiences. They are once in a lifetime. Thank you for letting it be possible!