Our house welcomed us with open arms, warming us with heated stone walls as the snow fell upon our arrival. The weather changes often, and when the sun shines here it is breathtakingly beautiful, then I am sitting in the sunlight, soaking up as much vitamin D as I can before the grey skies return. I stand basking in the sunlight, grateful that I have this opportunity to participate in a different culture, discover a sense of history different from that of my home country, and explore Roman roads, hiking trails, tractor paths and foot paths that lead me to unknown locales.

I feel a sense of freedom here that I don’t have in the States. I used to think it came from not knowing the language, but now I think it may be due to the lifestyle. My daily routines that I do are the same here—shop for food, go for walks, talk with my neighbors—but somehow it is also different. There is less sense of stress here. Certainly people still have problems, but as a community they seem to work together to solve those problems.