By Jena Levy
Growing up, Alex Honeysett was not a big traveler.
“The farthest my family and I have ever traveled was vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard every August,” she says.
Wanting to put a stamp in her empty passport, she spent her summer studying in Rome, Italy.
Everything about her trip appeared to be standard for study abroad. She was in Rome from the beginning of June through the beginning of August. Alex, a communication and journalism major from New Rochelle, N.Y. , took a screen writing class every day where “the teacher was an Italian hippie.”
She lived in an apartment with two other girls in a residential area called Monteverde, and traveled throughout Italy on weekends.
“The most insane part was being in Rome for the World Cup,” she says. “I was never a soccer fan, but it was pretty intense. People were wearing the Italian colors all week, driving around like maniacs with Italian flags waving from their windows.”
Sneaking onto a train after a weekend away really got Alex’s excitement going. She and her friends had just spent the weekend in Verona, and were rushing to make it back to Rome in time for a game. When they finally arrived, she says, the streets were filled with people and restaurants were mounting TVs outside.
“When the game went into overtime, I asked for a beer and no one would serve me until the game was over,” Alex says. “I waited for 20 minutes.”
“No one slept that night,” she says. When she returned to her apartment at 5 a.m., she could still hear the screaming and celebrating from the streets.
“The next couple of days, the city basically shut down so everyone could get over their hangovers,” Alex says.
Alex thought that immediately after college she would follow in her father’s footsteps. He works as an editor for “60 Minutes,” and she planned to pursue a career in television media as well.
After her adventures and experiences this summer, she decided she is not ready for a job. She wants to travel the world and see what else is out there after she graduates in May.
For Alex, this was not just a summer studying in Rome.
“It turned out to be the summer of a lifetime,” she says.
