It’s all so unfamiliar. The streets, twisting in strange and different patterns. People I have never seen before, speaking a language I don’t understand. The words worm towards my mind but don’t quite touch it. I glance up at the signs hanging above from shop awnings and the words flutter and writhe before my eyes. The same letters I know but spelling words unfamiliar to me. I walk farther into the heart of this unfamiliar place. The street is of stone bricks and the buildings white, with shingles the color of red clay. The sky is a light beautiful blue with few clouds and a bright sun. I feel exposed. A man is selling cannoli from a stand by a statue, depicting a god on a marble pedestal. He holds a lightning bolt in one hand and an eagle perched on the other. He wore a toga with long flowing folds. The man shouted in a confusing tongue and I continued on. I walked past shops where people worked and homes where people lived, just like in my home, but so different. Parents played with their children in parks and took them to ice cream parlors on the plaza. Just like in my home, but so different. I looked around, the buildings rising up on all sides and I realized. I was lost. My palms began to sweat and I felt panic well up inside me. Lost. lost in the heart of a distant city. So far from home. I began to run down the twisting streets but nothing looked familiar. If anything I seemed to be going deeper. Deeper. deeper.