CURRENT MISSION to help others appreciate new york; to feel at home again; conoscere qualque italiano a new york e mantenere il mio italiano! ABOUT ME i first came to italy---and really started to travel deeply--last summer, when i volunteered on organic farms in Toscana. i loved it so much i decided to move to Italy for a year. it seemed important to me to lose the provinciality, the kind of narciscism (correctly spelled? months of living in a second language have destroyed my spelling), so particular to new york. previously, i spent a lot of time in climate-controlled environments reading nineteenth-century novels. PHILOSOPHY i always choose the beautiful over the convenient.