The sun beat down on the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, as a pretty young woman bought a gelato from a street vendor. She asked for lemon and chocolate in fluent Italian, and savored the combination as the two scoops of ice cream dripped from the cone onto her hand. She licked the excess gelato away, while the sun glinted off her dark copper hair, and she walked past the Uffizi gallery on her way home. She had lived in Florence for two years, after finishing college with a bachelor's degree in fine arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, a respected institution for people with artistic talent, mostly designers, but there had been a number of fine arts students there too. After Rhode Island, she got a master's degree at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, which she had loved too. She had dreamed of studying art in Italy all her life, and had finally come here, after Paris, and this was where she knew she was meant to be.

She took drawing classes every day, and was learning the painting techniques of the old masters. In the past year, she felt she had done some very worthwhile work, although she still felt she had much to learn. She was wearing a cotton skirt and sandals she had bought from a street vendor for fifteen euros, and a peasant blouse she had bought on a driving trip to Siena. She had never been as happy in her life as she was here. Living in Florence was her dream come true.

She was planning to attend an informal life drawing class with a live model, at an artist's studio at six o'clock that night, and she was leaving for the States the next day. She hated to leave, but had promised her mother she'd come home, as she did every year. It was wrenching for her to leave Florence even for a few days. She was returning in a week, and then leaving for a trip to Umbria with friends. She had seen a lot of Italy since she'd been there, gone to Lake Como, spent some time in Portofino, and it seemed as if she had visited every church and museum in Italy. She had a particular passion for Venice and the churches and architecture there. She knew with absolute certainty that Italy was where she was meant to be, she had come alive since she'd been there. It was where she had found herself.