I'm back in the United States for one week. Unfortunately there's not much to report. I've been doing a lot of organizing, cooking, watching decent television, and applying for jobs. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat again.

Mostly I've gotten used to moving back and forth between Italian and American cultures. But there are things that I certainly miss about living in Italy. The first thing is the walking. Or just general accessibility to other places. I'm going tomorrow to get my car which has been stored while I was away. I've driven a bit, but I hate that I can't just walk 10 minutes to the grocery store or just to look at my favorite windows.

Which brings me to numero due: window shopping. I barely spent money on non-edible items or "experiences." It's part of my travel philosophy, but then it's also just a practical case. You can't go with one suitcase and accumulate too much. Still I loved to waste time just walking around and looking at the windows. Normally you don't go into a store in Italy unless you have the intention to buy, so the merchants spend considerable time putting those windows together as bait. Just stunning.

And while I could go on about lots of things, what I notice, but don't necessarily miss, is the anxiety of speaking with strangers. Most of the time I like to talk to people I don't know just to be friendly. I get it from my momma. Or maybe I'm kind of Southern. Either way, I find talking to O.P.s, or "other people," to be a neat way to meet different kinds of people and learn things I never would have known before that conversation. The thing is that talking with O.P.s is infinitely more difficult when you have to speak your second language. What if you don't know a word? How about if you can't understand something? These are feelings you get used to with time and lots of practice, but I like being able to make jokes and to lead conversations sometimes.

I miss some parts of living in Italy, but I could get used to this.