After a long Journey involving trains, planes, automobiles and buses, very little sleep, and a crying baby on a seven and a half hour transatlantic flight, I have finally arrived in Torino. It's good to be home. Already, the journey is long forgotten, even the crying baby, and I have decompressed and found my bearings between cappuccinos, familiar streets and old friends. The city is the same, the people also. The first place I sat my tired self down, suitcase and all, was a caffè I hadn't visited in over two years. I walked in and was received by an "It's been a long time since I last saw you!" from the owner sitting behind the cash register, glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Memories of after-school rendez-vous with good friends flooded in and I simply smiled and knodded, not feeling like delving into the whole "I moved away, I now live in America, and not in New York City" thing quite yet. So as you see, you can give a city a facelift, something they seem to be trying to do to my city, but its essence, its core, will never change. And really, who would want it to? It's nice being able to know that anywhere I go, I'm probably going to meet someone who knows me, my mother, my history and maybe something about my present. They treat me the same, a little like a foreigner, "The American has returned!", and a lot like one of their own, "Eat, you're too skinny!".