My past month in Italy has felt like a deep breath – a slow, purposeful change of pace to release tension I didn’t even know I had been holding. Here, everything moves at a slower pace: meals, transportation, conversations, and even work assignments. Italians are proud to share “the slow life” with anyone open to learning. It means finding enjoyment in every part of the day, focusing on quality rather than deadlines, and prioritizing big-picture goals over task lists and schedules.

The best way to encapsulate this is through the food culture. In Italy, a meal is not meant to be ordered at a drive-thru and scarfed down alone in your car, but rather a social and enjoyable part of every day. It is not uncommon for a dinner to last multiple hours. Even after all the plates are cleared, you can order an expresso or a glass of wine to extend the meal another hour. This would be unthinkable (or even rude) to do in the United States, where waiters are anxious to seat the next party and maximize their tips. Luckily, waiters in Italy are happy to leave you be; in fact, it can take nearly twenty minutes to get the check. While I do miss my to-go iced coffees, there is beauty in lingering at a café and sipping on an expresso among friends.

At home, I am a busy girl. As a pre-med student, I try my best to balance school, work, research, volunteering, and shadowing with my hobbies, relationships, and self-care, but often find that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. I try to make every moment purposeful, which means watching lectures while doing my makeup, studying on the shuttle home from class, or even working on homework during commercial breaks of Survivor. After arriving in Italy, all I could think was “now what.” Every moment that ticked away, I felt anxious, like I had something I needed to be doing. It took time to adjust, but as my surroundings slowed, eventually so did I.

The slow life may not be my natural speed, but it certainly is a sweet break. Scheduled days have been replaced with wandering the narrow streets, stopping anywhere that catches my eye. It means giving up on punctual transportation and accepting that the bus will get there when it gets there. It means dinners last as long as the conversation. It means that a stop for gelato can take an hour and a 40-minute walk really isn’t that far. When I come home, I hope I can remember these lessons. Even as the world around me picks back up, I can take a deep breath, forget my schedule, and take things as they come.

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Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: Global Internships: Rome