During my last night in Italy, Milan, my friends and I from my study abroad group got together for our last family dinner. Throughout our trip, we would plan “family dinner nights” since technically we did become a little family during our month-long program. They pretty much consisted of everyone either cooking something or buying stuff for the dinner like drinks, napkins, etc. In other words, it was our very own San Gottardo (the street where we lived and what we called our family) Potluck! As I mentioned earlier this was our last night in Milan, since the next day we were to wake up at 5 am to go catch our plane home. Luckily for us, Gibby (one of the funniest and nicest people you’ll ever meet), decided to make some AMAZING pesto pasta salad, and bomb garlic bread.
So there we were eating and drinking Té Pesca (Peach Tea) which literally became everyone’s obsession during the trip. TBH I sometimes didn’t understand the obsession, it tasted just like the peach tea they sell at Jack in the Box, but I totally gave in as well. Besides, I personally loved the lemon one way more since it tasted kind of minty. We were all having a good time, talking about our crazy adventures, night’s out and of course our inside jokes! We even opened up a bottle of Meloncello (Italian Melon Liquor) thanks to our friend Chao who made our last night even more memorable by sharing the Italian drink with us. We all took a shot, and drank to the many memories we made together and to hopefully one day come back to Italy for a reunion!
As our laughs died down, one of the girls started asking around what our moment was. By MOMENT she meant a time during the trip that we felt pure happiness and almost dreamlike. With that, a lot of the girls answered that their moment was during their visit to Disneyland Paris, while others answered the fireworks on Bastille day. Unlike them, for Gibby, it had been visiting Anne Frank’s house during his trip to Amsterdam. Everyone was saying something different and explaining their reasoning to the group. Not everyone spoke up and I was one of them, I realized that no matter how great this trip had been I hadn’t experienced my moment yet. Or at least I couldn’t choose one, I felt heartless, BUT I quickly moved on and continued to enjoy the night.
I took this picture the next day on one of the three plane’s back to Los Angeles, California. In this exact instant is when I had MY MOMENT.
I was sitting in my window seat trying to get a quick nap when all of a sudden I opened my eyes and noticed the amazing view. I obviously wanted to capture it, so I grabbed my camera and snapped away. To get this picture I actually had to turn around and catch the view through the window of the passenger behind me. I honestly couldn’t believe how beautiful it was outside, but mostly I could not believe that I was on my way back home from one of the most amazing trips of my life thus far. Not to get really cheesy and emotional, but I started shedding some tears. Tears of happiness, because I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
Aside from feeling blessed, I call this my moment because that is when I realized that I wasn’t just bringing back stories and memories with me, but I was taking home way more than that. I was bringing back home old friendships that had been strengthened, but also beautiful new friendships I had created with people I didn’t even know at first. It seemed crazy to me that I didn’t even know some of these people went to my school at all, yet they became my closest friends during this trip. Or even crazier to think that I had three of those people in some of my classes the previous semester, yet who would have known I was to become so close to them later on!
Life really does work in mysterious ways, but most of all I thanked God for introducing me to amazing human beings that shared such breath-taking experiences with me. So if you guys are reading this, you know who you are. Thank you for all the laughs we shared, but most of all for your friendship and being a part of MY MOMENT!
I love my San Gottardo Fam!
Thanks for reading this and feel free to comment & share below YOUR MOMENT from Summer 2017!
xoxo Pao Fog