Five hour hike through Cinque Terre, wine tasting in Montalcino, Grape Fesitval in Impruneta, exploring the ruins of Pompeii, sailing along the coast of Capri, getting a gondola ride for free...a month of intensive Italian at the Unversita' per Stranieri di Siena, living with four Italian roommates, participating in contrada festivals and dinners, going to Firenze to see the Gates of Paradise standing proudly before you...I sporadically have these epiphanies that life is truly a wonderful thing, and the adventures that studying abroad in Siena have brought have been high on my life list of things to do before I die.
Study abroad has become so common among college juniors that I felt like I was applying to colleges again this summer when every conversation included, "and will you be going abroad this year?" When I first prepared for my arrival in Italy, therefore, I felt like one of many. However, being in Siena, I continue to be challenged every day and every challenge has its reward. It takes curiosity, strength and endurance to just pick up and move your life to another country for a semester. And then, once you have done so, to go out, take risks and go on adventures to explore your country and all of the manifestations it has worked so hard to create over the years.

At this moment I am currently perched in my apartment in the early evening looking out my bedroom window at the brick buildings and red roofs that scatter the skyline of Siena. Having just returned from a weekend in the southern part of Italy, where we ate "the world's best pizza" in Naples, swam in the Grotto Azzurra in Capri, took a choo-choo train ride through Sorrento and explored the ruins of Pompeii, I am comforted by the sounds of what has become my community. The bell tower rings fearlessly and I am reminded from time to that I am not looking out at just any view, but at the famous Tuscan countryside so well known for its wines and vineyards. Despite my favorite country song playing from my computer, the sound I hear the most prominently is that of the Sienes families living in my apartment area's contrada, Lupa ("she-wolf").
Each part of Siena's center is divided into seventeen different contradas and these family ties are not to be messed with. Upon announcing the contrada that we are each a part of to a few Sienese students that we met, we were abruptly corrected - we do not belong to those contradas, they informed us, for we are not from Siena. Despite this, my roommate, Frances, and I purchased contrada flags later that week and they now hang proudly from our bedroom walls. We will be here for four months, and we feel like we are a part of the contrada, so it will be our little secret.