Video for Rotary

Ciao a tutti! This is the video I will show my host Rotary club about my life here in the USA. It's in Italian, but most slides have pictures, so you should be fine. The song is "Home" by Phillip Phillips. Enjoy!

Note: Hit play.

One More Month

One more month of waiting. 31 more days of anticipation. 4.5 more weeks to figure out what to pack, how many bags I am taking, what to wear in the airport, oh and how to speak Italian well enough to find the bathroom in the airport.
Most of my friends have already made their way to their host countries, and that gives me the confidence that I won't get lost in airports, and that I won't show up with no host family to greet me. I'm almost done with my presentation for my host Rotary club, and I will totes post it here when I am done. I am doing it in video format so that I won't have to speak in broken Italian.

Girls' Weekend

 Friday August 10, I applied for my student visa. We had some difficulties with a few documents, but hopefully I will still get my visa. After the appointment, I hung out with family all weekend. Here are some of the pictures I took.

The view from my Aunt Debbie's house in Palatine, IL

 It was my Aunt Debbie's 60th Birthday week, so we celebrated with some really tasty cupcakes. It was nice getting to see all of my Chicago family one last time before I go to Italy.

My cousin Lisa got us a hotel room at the Trump
Tower in downtown Chicago on Saturday Night so 
we could celebrate girls' weekend in style. This was our view. 


  

This is where we ate dinner on Saturday night. It had really good Mexican food.

L2R: Mom, Aunt Debbie, Lisa, Dee, Hannah, Me

This is the group photo from our weekend. It was a shame my cousin, Paige couldn't come up and spend the weekend with us as well.

Visa Appointment

This Friday, I have a meeting in Chicago with the Italian Consulate so I can apply for my student visa. Once I get my visa, I will finally get to get my airline tickets, which means I will know for sure my departure date! I will finally have a better answer to the question, "When are you leaving?" instead of sometime in Mid-September. Hopefully, it's sooner rather than later; I am so ready to go!