To come to Italy for nine months, I gave myself approximately one evening to pack. I spent one frantic evening making decisions about sweaters and toiletries until about 3:00 a.m. I sat on my bag to compress my stuff while zipping it closed, crossing my fingers that it weighed less than the 50-pound limit dictated by Turkish Airlines. When I arrived at my final destination after 24 hours of travel, both the extraneous things I had brought as well as the many things I forgot became immediately apparent, and I had to come to peace with my somewhat haphazard packing choices.
I settled into an Airbnb rental apartment for the first few weeks. In the first few days, my jet lag left me bleary-eyed and foggy-headed, and it felt overwhelming to go further than a few blocks from the apartment because of the city’s labyrinthine maze of winding streets and alleys. Catania was first settled by the Greeks before 700 BC, and many of the city streets do not follow a grid like we are used to in the Midwest. Using the GPS on my phone to navigate certainly helped, but I was also eager to find my footing enough to move around my neighborhood without staring down at my screen.
