MRS Dropout.

It's finals week.  I don't know why I think finals week is so funny, but it is. At home it would be early May hinting at summer, but in South Bend who really knows, it could honestly be snowing and I wouldn't be surprised.  I would be locking myself in Madeleva, filling up the whiteboards, turning the room into a wallpaper of definitions, concepts, and charts.  Charts of everything.  Charts for school, countdown charts, charts of all the boys we think are cute.  We'd write down these charts over chips and queso and endless cyber combos because at this point does eating right actually matter at all? And we'd laugh because we'd spend more time watching Friday Night Lights and charting exactly how hot Tim Riggins is than actually studying.  Finals week is spent stressing out because it's fun to complain about how much work you need to do and then not do it.  It's spent taking shots in Madeleva because the added bonus of drinking in a classroom building is just to great to pass by. And it's spent listening to Disney Pandora because literally nothing is more motivating than Hercules' I Can Go the Distance.  Study breaks are trips to Fisher, the Wikipedia Game, and watching How to Train Your Dragon. Finals week is spent focused on relearning the classes I've worked so hard through and being so excited to finally be done, finally have summer at the tips of my fingers. But right now, for once in my life, I don't want summer one bit.

So yea, finals week is hilarious, because let's face it, it can't actually be finals week.

Let me give you a brief description of a finals week Rome style:

Its sunny and seventy degrees. I wear sundresses everyday. I eat lunch on the Pantheon and study (people watch) on the Spanish Steps.  My study breaks include walking to the Vatican, getting gelato at Frigidarium and shopping down Villa Del Corso. I spend more time taking an Italian cooking class, brushing up on my MRS degree, than actually studying for any one final.  The only chart I write on is the Crazy Brian Kelly Drinking Game (yes, this is a real thing).  So in my mind, finals week doesn't actually exist. Rome takes away the stress and sanctity of South Bend finals week.  My reality at this point isn't the exams I'm supposed to be focused on...it's a different kind of finals week for me.

I only have five full days left here.  I can't even comprehend that at this point.  It's like when you're trying to read a paragraph from a book but your focus melts into the edges and the margins and the words just don't stick. No matter how many times you stare at one letter, you don't know what it means.  Five days. Five days until I leave a country that has been my home, and who know's how long it will be until I come back.  Five last Pascucci sandwiches, five last days in front of the Pantheon, five last nights sleeping in my orphan bed.  To make it easier I think I trick myself into thinking that I'm just going home for break.  I'm so excited to see everyone, my friends and family that I miss more than the world, but I'm just going to stop by, get my fix, and come back.  Back to the streets of Rome, the city that is all mine.  I think that's why I'm so attached to this place.  Rome is the first thing I did on my own.  It's my city.  It's where I learned how to start somewhere new, without any help or anything comfortable.  I was literally on my own and built a life for myself here, so there's no way I'm leaving, right?  I just have to repeat that over and over, "I'm coming right back."  Otherwise I don't know if I can bring myself to get on that plane early Wednesday morning.

Five days and tomorrow it'll be four, and still I feel like I have so much to do. Many things are jokes here. Orphans are jokes, Portia Prebys is a joke, classes are jokes, exams are jokes, my life for the past three months...joke.  But leaving Rome is not a joke, and no matter how excited I am to go home, it doesn't take away the fact that I will never be able to relive an experience like this ever again.  I don't think I've ever been so sad for an ending to come, and for that I know I'm truly blessed.

But on the bright side, I will finally be reunited with my many loves in South Bend in one week's time. Regatta week will be one for the books and seeing my friends and family for the first time in ninety days makes me so happy I don't think anyone can even understand.

So on that note, wish me luck on finals week, and no I'm still not talking about the exams.