Lost or Just Drifting?

Lost. Something that I’ve become way too familiar with in the past few weeks. I HATE the feeling of being lost. I think that I acquired this feeling in Rome though because I associate being lost with being late to class or with being too far from our home in a foreign country. When I’m in Philly being lost isn’t so bad because I know that, if circumstance called for it, I could easily call a friend and they could point me in the right direction. In the worst case scenario I could ask a random person on the street. When in Rome, unless I have the phone number of a teacher, I’m pretty much screwed. The language barrier is defiantly something that sets us apart from the rest of Rome. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt like more of an outsider than I do here- in terms of orientation. Sometimes I feel like our differences in language gets us more lost than we already are because everyone seems to give us a different route to get to where we need to be going. However, I found it very interesting that there have been plenty of times that Italians gave us the proper route with almost only body language.

If lost is going in the wrong direction with the intent to go to a specific destination, its something that I’ve been good at lately. The tension and stress that I feel most of the time when I’m lost something frustrates me to the point of tears. In general, I’m a really emotional person. I take lost of things to heart and tend to let one small thing float around in my mind.

The upside of being lost is that I get to experience parts of the city that I have never seen before. Being lost also obligates me to find my way no matter what.

On the other hand, I LOVE to drift. Drifting is such a carefree activity, one in which you don’t worry about where you are going or how you will get home. I feel that drifting is made easier and less stressful with the constantly running taxi system in Rome. I feel very secure walking around without a specific destination knowing that I’m not on a strict time schedule.

I feel like this was one of the reasons that I enjoyed drifting so much in Trestevere today. I was just discovering and exploring new parts of my new, temporary city. I loved to just wonder and drift from one location to another without the hustle and anxiety of finding a specific place. I think that I especially enjoyed it because I was with friends and fellow classmates who were with me in the same situation. When I’m with my friends in a foreign place, I automatically feel a sense of relief because I know that I have people with me who will (hopefully) be with me until the end of the drifting experience. Together, we could work our way out of a dilemma or “lost” situation.

Looking for artifacts made the experience much more fun. You don’t realize your true surrounding until you walk with eyes on the floor. I saw everything on the floor, things that you wouldn’t expect to be laying there unless you specifically look for it. Everyone back home always told me that Rome was a dirty city, but I didn’t notice that until I started picking junk off the floor…