What were you grateful for this week?Being alive in general. 

What was the most challenging part of this week?That it was my last full week 🙁

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week. They do nice things for ME all the time. This weekend they had a barbecue and invited me to come. It was so much fun.

Tell us about your week! 

It being my last week, I decided to write a letter to the person I was before I started on this crazy adventure. Here it is:Dear Emily,Right now, you aren’t sure of anything. You’re not as bright-eyed as you were. You’re a little jaded, a bit hurt by life and the world. And you’re not sure if you can ever be the person you were. I’m here to tell you that you can’t. You can’t be the person you were anymore, and that is beautiful.You don’t know what’s coming and I can’t prepare you for it, but looking back to where you are, I can only tell you the things you’ll want to remember.We’ll start with the kids. You’ll want to remember how they pronounce the English words. You’ll want to take a lot of videos. And pictures. And you’ll want to remember the times they laughed at your goofiness. You’ll want to remember the considerate translation of your host mom and how your host dad brags about you to all their friends. “She understands Italian so well!” “She sings so well!” And you’ll want to remember their friends telling you, “you speak clear English. You have an ‘open accent’.”And the food! You’ll want to savor the way the bread melts in your mouth, how chewy and amazing the pizza is, the salty spiced miracle of bresaola, the intensity of pesto, and the fresh fruit served at every meal. You’ll wonder how you made it this long without these flavors.You’ll go to Paris and be terrified. But there will be a little street full of vendors selling flowers that will save your life. Lots of people will ask you to drink. You’ll get robbed (subtly) but that will help you to learn the metro. French food will sweep you off your feet.You’ll learn a lot about yourself. You’ll visit Milan and see design week and literally perish about it. It’ll light a fire in your heart for the rest of your life. You’ll realize your life isn’t worth living to you unless there is beauty, and art, and creation.You’ll go to Portugal and it’ll make your heart ache with saudade and all the men will flirt with you. You’ll learn that although you love too easily, sometimes that’s a beautiful, good thing. You’ll be kissed — really, kissed — by a complete stranger. It’ll make you laugh harder than you expected. And you won’t anticipate how beautifully the music of Lisbon sits in your soul, leaching some of the self-poisoning out of your bloodstream, making you feel hopeful again. At least you will learn you’re not the only one who feels things so incredibly deeply. And you’ll fall in love with the ocean again.You’ll meet friends in Venice. You won’t know them beforehand but they’ll become so important to you within, like, 2 hours. They’ll listen to your heartbreak. They’ll laugh at the dumb stuff you say. And they’ll show you how romantic Venice is at night, even if you have no one to share it with. Romance is not exclusive to couples.In Genova you’ll remember that God sends real angels to watch out for you. You’ll also remember how much you love pizza and aquarium touch-tanks. You’ll feel young again. And you’ll face your fear of Ferris wheels.In Rome you will finally shed your first “I cannot believe I am actually seeing this” tears. You will purchase the biggest gelato you’ve ever seen and eat all of it with no problems and feel GREAT. You’ll spend a lot of time on the grounds of the temple, saying prayers, thinking of God, and being so grateful. You’ll learn there’s nothing sketchier than sitting at a train station after midnight waiting for the last train to come. But you’ll survive it.Switzerland will teach you that as much as you love a city, the mountains are where you feel at home. You’re going to want to sing more and more the longer you’re there. You’re going to learn the value of having the kind of friend who understands what you are. You will learn that cheese and chocolate are your idea of the main food groups; Switzerland knows what’s up.You’re going to get to Florence, and it will be a dream come true. You’ll want to breathe it all in. You’ll want to hug everyone. And you’ll make a promise there, to yourself and your future — that you will always seek for the unseen light. That you will be discovering things and learning things all the way up until your breath leaves your body. Since I know you’re wondering, you will have many long nights where you feel so lonely you wonder if a single person thought about you on the whole planet. You will have moments of pure pain, where you cry on the floor of the bathroom (once in an airport!) and times when you aren’t sure how you’ll ever put yourself back together again. You will, though — I don’t know how it happened, but here I sit with all my pieces realigned in ways that I couldn’t have imagined when I was where you are. You can’t go back to who you were before because you were never meant to *be* her in the end, anyway. You will reach a point where you realize that you are and have been who you’re supposed to be, at all moments, even the hopeless ones. You will find it in yourself to love each new woman you become. Really love her. Not just tolerate her. And what’s even better about that is, the love you have for yourself will make you want to become better.Part of that will be an appreciation for your own beauty. You’ll learn admiration for that little piece of you that wants to save the world. You’ll learn to embrace your poetic side even if it is a little dramatic. You’ll begin to appreciate how easy it is to impress you, how hard it is to make you mad, and how much you strive to forgive when that is sincerely the hardest thing in the world for you. But you’ll also learn you love the way pink hair looks on you. You’ll learn to love your legs for how weighty they are — it’s like they were made to help you up the millions of staircases. You’ll learn to love your freckles, and the little pooch on your tummy that means you’ve been eating a LOT of pasta. You’ll learn to be much more comfortable in front of a camera. And you’ll learn that your smile really is pretty, as well as beautiful. For the first time in your life you’ll be able to see why someone might be attracted to you.You’re going to change in Europe. You’re going to learn the value of sightseeing, but also the extraordinary need to stand still and just be happy where you are. You were already wiser than you need to be — and you’ll return wiser still.I won’t tell you not to be afraid. Partially because it’s useless, but also because you won’t learn how brave you are until you’re panicked and UNCOMFORTABLE and lost and you choose not to collapse but to fight for yourself. Your fear will teach you which things are worth sticking your neck out for.You’ll learn that you can write a list of everything you want out of life, and that’s great, but sometimes you won’t ask for what you really need. What you need will come anyway, and in the end it’ll be better than all the things you wanted so badly that you thought were perfect for you but aren’t what will make you the absolute best and happiest version of you. You’re not done getting your heart broken. But it will also swell with unbelievable joy. You will finally see what a blessing it is just to have been here on this big beautiful planet, what a gift it is to be alive and to be loved and to be human here. This trip was the beginning of realizing that you belong anywhere you want to be. Follow your scared, scarred heart, sweet girl. It’ll lead you all around the world, and right back home.Love,A good, good friend.