Ciao tutti!

It’s now two months and counting until I will be packing my bags and winging my way to Italy, and I cannot wait! My name is Ffion, I study Italian and English Literature, and in September I will be leaving Edinburgh for the sunnier climes of Bologna, and Europe’s oldest University.

Living in Italy has always been an ideal of mine, so much so I am currently buzzing with excitement at the very thought of it, and am waiting for the nerves to kick in when I realise that I’m actually going. At the moment it is very much an unreal prospect –no matter how many course booklets I look through, flight prices I compare and facebook groups I browse, I feel that this is all for someone else, not for me. The day I actually realise I’m leaving will be a very strange, and I expect, very emotional one. Though, if I were going to leave Edinburgh for any other city, it would have to be one in Italy.

Italy has always felt like a second home to me. I’m not entirely sure why I feel such a strong connection to it; I have no Italian family, and although I’ve visited frequently since I was a wee kid, I’ve never actually lived there. But somehow I can’t help feeling this is going to be the best year ever, and in a strange way, that I’m going home. Of course I have apprehensions, and of course I don’t relish leaving my friends and moving to a brand new city to start all over again, but the thrill of having the opportunity to live in Italy far outweighs any worries I have. After all, this is exactly what many of us did when we arrived in Edinburgh for Freshers’ Week, and for me at least, that was an amazing year which I look back on with extremely fond memories. Surely an Erasmus year is thus almost a second-first year, just this time in a sunnier climate, with a more confusing language barrier, but also with the confidence of knowing you’ve done it all before and you can do it again, no problem.

Speaking to this year’s Erasmus students who are currently on their way home, I realise how lucky we are to have this whole experience ahead of us; I’m losing count of the amount of times I’ve been told they’re jealous of us new students getting ready to go! Of course it won’t all be easy, of course there’ll be periods of difficulty and homesickness when it will seem a lot easier to have just stayed and shuffled around the familiar cobbles of George Square, but I feel it’s time for a new challenge. Something slightly more adventurous than a post-exam road trip to the Highlands in a clapped out Ford. Something slightly more testing than going to a party where you hardly know anyone.

I just feel that now, it’s time to leave the comfort zone, and frankly, I can’t wait.