I'm sure some of you might be wondering, "Will Morgan ever miss Texas??" "When is she going to be begging to come back home?". Well people, I'm wondering the same thing. What's crazy is that when I'm not in Castiglion Fiorentino, I miss Castiglion Fiorentino. I somehow now consider a hotel to be my home. Don't get me wrong, I miss my friends and family back home so much. But, being here in Italy on my own (with people who are in the same boat as me) has taught me so dang much about myself and just about life in general.
There definitely is such thing as culture shock and when and how it should happen to you. Typically, you experience culture shock 1/3 of a way through a new experience. Because we're abroad, we should have experienced it around the 3rd week (last week). I don't feel like I've hit a "low" yet and don't really feel it coming, which scares me because I'm afraid it will be sudden and hard. According to Oberg's U-Curve Model, cultural adaptation usually begins with euphoria. I experienced euphoria for about a week and feel almost as if I have euphoria every time I visit a new place. After experiencing euphoria, you usually tend to start going in a downward spiral while gaining anxiety. I will say that I have experienced some anxiety. But, one important thing I've learned is to just live in the moment and if something doesn't work out the way I want it to, there's usually a good reason why and maybe that's not what was best for me. After anxiety, you hit rock bottom or rejection (culture shock). When someone is going through culture shock, the best thing to do is to show them social support and immerse them in pop culture. For me, that would include watching The Office and listening to music that my friends and I would listen to back home or maybe eating pickles (which I have yet to find here). I'm worried that I will get hit with culture shock very hard at a random time and hit the lowest of lows. After culture shock, you will start to adjust until you hit the phase of euphoria again. This model can take place multiple times. What I honestly think will happen is that I hit major culture shock when I get back to Texas and realize I have so many responsibilities I've been putting off while I've been living it up for the past 3 months in Italy. I guess we'll see!!
This past week we had the absolutely INCREDIBLE opportunity to go to Rome!! This is something I have dreamed of since I was a kid (may or may not be because of The Lizzie McGuire Movie). Without a doubt, Rome is one of the best cities I think we've been to so far. I have high hopes for Venice, too! Seeing the Colosseum, the roman ruins, and the Pantheon was so eye opening. I truly never thought that I would see these monumental things that I have learned about and known of for so long. At the end of the Rome trip Clara, Paige and I had plans to go to Barcelona for the weekend. Well, the night before we were supposed to leave we found out that our plane tickets were actually booked for March and not this specific weekend. I really thought I would have a breakdown because things weren't working out the way they were supposed to. But, everything ended up working out the way it was supposed to. There turned out to be major political protests in some streets of Barcelona the same weekend that we would have been there- who knows what could have happened? After those plans didn't seem to workout, we planned on going to Naples to visit Pompeii. Unfortunately, we ended up missing the train to Naples the next morning so that didn't work out either. By that point, we were all pretty homesick....of the hotel in Castiglion Fiorentino. Yes, you read that right. We all missed the hotel that has become our homes in a little less than a month. Ultimately, we decided to head back home and have a relaxing girls weekend. We ended up spending a day shopping and pampering ourselves in Florence on Saturday, then playing catch up on our lives on Sunday. Everything worked out the way I think it was supposed to!
Stay tuned to find out if I'm still living the wonderful Italian life or if I have finally hit my rock bottom!!