Birthday, internship, and Rootstech.

My birthday recently passed! I'm so grateful that I have so many amazing friends here in Idaho. I joke about most of my friends being married and therefore dead to the world, but in reality they're all amazing and reliable friends to me. My best friend and brother Brady drove up here from Utah with his wife to surprise me. They gave me a really unique and special gift that they had though out really well. Then we all went to a party in our lounge. Just about all of my friends here in Idaho showed up, and we had the time of our lives dancing. As the night got later, people started leaving one by one. Eventually, there were four of us left, but we kept dancing. All of a sudden, a giant group of kids passing by the lounge saw us through the window and came in to dance with us. They totally revived the party, and it went on. I went to bed at 5 in the morning that night.
This weekend I also had the fantastic opportunity to drive down to Salt Lake to attend Rootstech. For those of you who don't know, Rootstech is an annual genealogy convention held in the Salt Palace. Genealogy freaks like me from all over the world, over 27,000 in all, gathered in that convention center to share new technology and methods for discovering our ancestors. There were guest appearances and presentations from Donny Osmond, David Archuletta, and Studio C. There were all sorts of booths, from regular people and from business, selling and presenting whatever they came up with that year. I went around giving out my information to the various companies, offering my services as a professional translator. Many of them were extremely excited about it, and promised to call me. I also found a booth of Italians, advertising for a genealogical tour of Campania, Italy. I started talking to them, and offered my help. They told me that they mostly do tours of the province of Campania, but that occasionally they also do tours of Puglia. They asked me if I know the province of Puglia very well. Laughing, I told them that it's the province I know best in Italy. I know Puglia extremely well, from one end to the other, with all of the fantastic little towns and sites in between. They were extremely excited about that, and told me that we can work together as soon as I get to Bari in April.
What... What was that, Alan? Did you just say that you're going to Bari in April? What?
Yep, you read right! I'm moving to Bari! All semester I've been looking for an internship like crazy. For a while there I almost committed to going to work at the Universidad de Córdoba, Argentina. But then, thanks to the help from my dear friend in Rome, Maria Teresa, I was connected to the right people, and I received an internship in Bari! I'll be working at a translation firm that specializes in legal translations! How perfect could that be for me? I'm studying international law, with a secondary emphasis in translation and teaching languages. I'll be doing translations of legal documents from Italian to English and Spanish. I'll also be teaching advanced English classes to their English translation team, in order to help them learn better ways of translating certain phrases. I couldn't have designed a more perfect internship myself!
While I'm in Bari, I'll also be volunteering with Save The Children, an NGO that helps endangered and at risk children. I'll also go out with the missionaries and help them out as much as I can.
Ever since I returned from my mission two years ago, I've been looking for a legitimate reason like this one to return to my beloved Italy. It would be a severe understatement to say that I miss Italy; a more accurate way of putting it would be to say that it calls to me, every single day of my life. I feel homesick when I'm not there, and as soon as I arrive on Italian soil I feel at home, like I'm where I'm supposed to be. My love for that country is something that wouldn't be satisfied with occasional touristic visits. I've always known that I'll end up living in Italy eventually. Now I'll finally be able to satisfy that itch, at least for a few months. Needless to say, it's hard to sleep at night when I think about it. Torno fra poco, Italia!