Thirteen Days.

That's what I've got left. Thirteen days of espresso, 13 days of breakfast cookies and frutti di bosco jam. 13 days of studying literature, 13 days of waking up to fog in the valley. 13 days of Loconda del Lupo, 13 days of cuddle puddles.
Out nearly four months, only 13 days remain.
In the last 94 days, I've grown accustomed to certain things that will be very strange to leave. Like living in a cold 800 year old monastery, and having the heat turned on for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening (except for when it breaks and doesn't come on at all...). I've gotten used to living in an Ikea catalog and looking out my window to see a mountain. 3 day weekend are the norm, and reading 3 books a week is not unusual.
As we wind down and begin preparations for the end of the semester, we are all faced with conflicted feelings. While I'm excited to go home and see everyone and spend Christmas with my family, I'm terribly sad to leave everyone and what has become home in the last 3 months. As much as it's nearly impossible, I'm trying not to think about leaving, and concentrate on making the most out of these last days in Italy.
I'm halfway through this last class, and it's been pretty good so far. Very challenging, having as much as 150 pages of reading in one night, but it's interesting. So far we've read Daisy Miller and the Aspern Papers by Henry James, The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and we are currently reading Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster.

Yesterday, a few of us experienced something great: Italian Cinema. Or more precisely...American cinema dubbed in Italian. Laugh all you want, but we went to see Twilight in the theater here. The second in a ridiculously stupid series about vampires, New Moon was just as funny as we had hoped. 7 of us went, and we were the only ones in the theater. It was a good thing, too, since we talked throughout the entire movie. Since we don't speak much Italian, we had knew very little of what was going on in the film, so we just made up what we thought they were saying. It was pretty fun, and let us make use of the little Italian we did know.
Speaking of Italian, our final was yesterday. The class is pass/fail, and it all depends on the final exam. Unfortunately for me (and several others) it was harder than i had imagined. So whether or not I passed is still up in the air...we'll see what happens.