Hours later, Signora Franci came in again, this time with green velvet slippers she had bought because I always walked around in socks. She said something I equated as: Of course you're going to get sick if you have cold feet all the time―warm them. "Mille grazie," I said. But a day later, when I was feeling better much sooner than I thought I would, I wanted to thank her more.
It was three weeks into the trip, and she had made me realize why I came to Italy. It wasn't just to see art―though I saw it, and it made me feel creative and part of history and enriched. And it wasn't just to get away. What I needed, and what I never got from sweet Australians or kind teachers, was the returned belief in basic human kindness. Signora Franci didn't take care of me because of anything else but basic human concern: Someone is sick, she's away from her home, make her better. I was 25 years old, I had just started seeing more bad in people than good―and I needed to see that kindness in action.
In my last week in Siena, I just took in the medieval walls, the green narrow hills and the wet, wet air. My Italian class performed a terrible spoken version of "Don Giovanni" for the whole school. I rode to other hill towns on huge buses with my Aussie friends, and the last night we drank wine and wandered through the streets yelling phrase-book expressions at each other.
Days before I went home, I knew I'd be ready for it. There were people to get back to, and I knew who they were. People, in general, could be terrible and wonderful. Sad that I had to go to Italy to realize that. Amazing that I could.
本文来源：http://www.010zaixian.com/wenxue/sanwen/572298.htm