Europe

I have wanted to speak Italian for pretty much as long as I can remember. Up until the age of 5 I spent at least 2 or 3 days a week with my grandparents who spoke almost wholly in Italian both with each other and to my cousins and I. I went to primary school with the basics, counting to 10, hello, goodbye, come here, please, thank you etc. However, my primary school didn't offer Italian as a LOTE, it didn't offer a language post-grade 1 at all.

Then I went to high school yippee, languages! Hopefully I can finally learn Italian and work out what the hell Nonna's saying half the time.
Nope. BHC offered French and Japanese. Well, I figured French is closest to Italian so if I couldn't study Italian, French was the next best thing. I loved it. For the first time I experienced the beauty of language. To be able to speak and communicate in a minority language is incroyables. It's so amazing to walk down the street and hear snippets of conversation and understand them only to realise a second later that they weren't speaking English. I mean it obviously doesn't happen every day but on occasion...yeah and it feels awesome. Probably didn't hurt that I had the most amazing, incredible, dedicated and wonderful French teacher from year 8 all the way through to year 12.

Then I went to Uni and finally, finally, started Italian. On the one hand, it was everything I dreamed, finally being able to speak and understand (to a certain degree) the language I grew up surrounded by. On the other hand, it was hard going. Uni flies through lessons and topics and grammar principles at blink-and-you'll-miss-it speed, you spend hardly any time in class and the teachers, while good at their job, push for a lot more independent study which is hard in language. Not to mention the fact that three years in and I can still barely understand 1 word a sentence because Nonna and my aunties talk so fast and in one of the many dialects of Italy.

Language is a massive part of people's identities, it's a part of mine. My grandparents, my aunties and my dad, my brother even, they all speak Italian, it's part of my family to speak Italian. I'm not materialistic, I read books and stay home and study, I don't party or drink that much, I'm not obsessed with finding a boyfriend and getting married, the least I can do is speak Italian.

But I need to go to Italy, in order to speak Italian properly (to the level of French), I need to go to Italy.
I just...need to go.