My head resting on my pillow, I stared out the window next to me and into the navy sky. The last day had been a whirlwind of emotions and changes.

“You’ll be fine, don’t worry,” Joseph Cavaliere, my father, kept repeating as I tried to hold back the tears welling up in my already bloodshot eyes. I hugged my parents tightly one last time and walked away.

I left Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on Aug. 26, 2006, around 4 p.m. bound for Rome, where I would be living for the next year. That 10-hour flight seemed to last days. The anticipation was palpable, I was going “home.”

As the plane skidded to a stop around 10 a.m., Italy time, my heart jumped. I inched my way off the plane behind a line of people who seemed less enthused to be in Italy’s capital city than I was.

I grabbed my baggage and headed through customs, where the guards stare at you with eyes that feel more like lasers. Safely through the lasers, I made it to my cousin Valentina.

Valentina Piscopo is the daughter of my mother’s oldest brother. She is the sister I never had, who happened to live 5,000 miles away.

“No turning back now,” Piscopo said, half chuckling. For the rest of
the day there was no time to imagine turning back.

We zipped on and off the highway and burst into the Eternal City that glows a golden brown all day long. I could feel Rome’s warmth over me as we traveled around the Coliseum, past the Roman Forum and down the narrow roads that led us up a steep hill to Via Pietra Roselli.

We parked the car and headed toward the hunter green gate where an ivory sign hungabove: “Welcome to The American University of Rome.” I stopped breathing as my eyes popped out of my head.

I was here, it was real, I was going to begin my college career. After four hours of filling out unnecessary paperwork, I was taken to my new apartment in Trastevere, a neighborhood just outside downtown Rome. I pushed open the two-ton door, trekked up the four flights of stairs, used my skeleton-like key to unlock another two-ton door and entered my fully Ikea-furnished abode. This is where I met Molly Rudolphi” ”

Molly and I instantly became friends as we discussed the quirkiness of every aspect of our new lives. Molly and I chose to share a room and quickly began to move in our belongings. We went to the window I would look out of hours later where we encountered our new neighbors. Directly next to us on the roof, one level down, resided five plump, burnt orange and red chickens, one angry onyx rooster and a pleasant linen-white goose. They seemed so out of place there on the roof in this majestic city. It was then I realized that I, too, was out of place. But I thought to myself, if these birds can make it here, so can I. “This would only happen in Italy,” Rudolphi said, laughing. She was right, this country is full of oddities, and I felt excited to be living here. The worry in me dwindled. My father was right, I need not worry, I would be fine.

To get your story published, send an e-mail to Collin Binkley at  [email protected].” ”