For just one semester more years ago than I care to count, I lived in a campus dorm on a vineyard outside of Rome, where sunflowers grew tall in salutation to the sky and the pears that fell from the orchard trees sent sweet juice dripping down your chin, leaving behind the sticky residue of pure, childlike joy.

I was majoring in English, minoring in philosophy, and charmed by all things ancient: classical mythologies with all their mischievous and meddlesome gods; the art, often reverent and as often really quite cheeky; the millennia-old architecture that had earned the right to let down its guard a little even as it stood, proudly but more at ease than it must have appeared over 2,000 years ago.