It has been TOO long.

I came to the realization that it has now been over a year since I have been in Italy. Ew. I can no longer say, “Last year at this time…” or “A year ago this day I was…”. My uncles used to tell me that they would sit around and “pretend to be me” and have silly conversations saying, “Dahling, where shall we go this weekend? Amsterdam? Switzerland? Greece?”

The roommates and I have been throwing around the idea of taking a trip in the few weeks we have off before work and grad school starts. I wish that I was still living in Europe where for a few hundred dollars I could be somewhere with a completely different culture with different languages, foods, societal norms, architecture, things to see, people to meet, etc. I’m currently in this phase where I don’t want to live in the United States anymore. I feel like I am at my best when I am challenging myself, trying new things, meeting new people, exploring on my own, etc.

I started a little list of why I want to live out of the U.S.

- Vacations. Now, I know that there is so much to see within the United States, but the diversity of what I can find in Europe and other parts of the world just amazes me.

- Pace of life. I feel like in other parts of the world, people enjoy life more and don't have the same American obsession with being the best and having the most. I loved that. In Italy they had a "siesta", on Sundays everything would shut down, and people would stroll down the streets knowing that wherever they were going would still be there whether they arrived in 2 minutes or 30 minutes.

- History. The United States is still in toddler stages compared to countries abroad. It was incredible, exciting, and belittling all at the same time to be in the presence of buildings and monuments and artifacts that have seen so much in their existence.

- Beauty and culture. Have you ever been blown away by how beautiful something is? Had your breathe taken away and just wanted to stand and stare at something forever? Well, well that was my life every day from January 15th to May 2nd in 2007.

- Environmental Friendliness. Small hybrid vehicles, public transportation, air-drying clothing, and actually taking the time to turn off all lights when leaving a room. Simple, yet smart.

- Education system. I read this article in the Wall Street Journal a few months back about childhood education in foreign countries that has stuck with me. However, even the simple fact that children around the world are growing up bi- and tri- lingual while in the US we can barely teach our children proper English says a lot.

- Health care. I just watched Sicko by Michael Moore and was a little shocked. I don’t know much about universal health care and how the policies we have in the US compare to European countries besides this film. I do however know that you can’t take everything at face value—including films like Moores’ and therefore need to do more research on this. But it seems pretty clear that Europeans have some things figured out pretty well on the health care front and Americans need to step up their game.

This post is longer than I expected and I am attempting to keep these posts shorter and easy to read so I’m done for now. Comments?