Dorthy from the Wizard of Oz was told to follow the yellow brick road to get back home. Well we ditched the sparkly red heels in the cornfields of Iowa and traded the smooth city streets of San Francisco for the uneven cobblestone roads of Rome, where we followed thousands of wine corkscrews shoved in the jagged pavement to a tiny apartment in the heart of Roma.

What are we doing here? Shouldn’t two new college graduates already be working full-time? Applying to grad school? Or perhaps a combo of it all: Working full-time and going to grad school while also working at an internship so that our resume don’t fall flat?

We are held to a certain expectation that once college is over we should start our careers. It’s what our grandparents did, and what our parents did, and now it’s time for us to pick up that baton and carry on that tradition.

I guess you can add that baton to the things we ditched when we decided to take a chance and move to Rome. Call us gypsy souls, or even untraditional but we are taking this time to make the world our playground. There are so many things you learn about yourself, so many perspectives you gain that can add to your field of work later on in life, when you remove yourself from what you know and make yourself “uncomfortable” elsewhere.

We weren’t handed this opportunity. We knew we wanted to get here and we worked our butts off for it. 15 hour babysitting shifts, late nights at the restaurant, 6 hours of sleep. But every minute of that was worth it to have a tiny apartment (literally the size of Harry Potters closet) in the middle of Rome- where we can pour ourselves into writing and photography, and even pizza making- who knows. The world is ours and we intend to make the most of it.

We will be posting all about Roma- the food, people, our lifestyle, and perhaps a vlog on how we are staying fit by lifting our pasta dishes to and from our mouths- here. Also stay tuned for our adventures to Barcelona, Brussels, Greece, Croatia, Switzerland and wherever else we can get to by plane, train, or even walking.

Remember to follow your own cobblestone road. We did and it lead us to Rome.