I’m a little worried as we wait for the taxi to arrive. I’ve got my last 40 euro in my pocket and still can’t withdraw any more. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I do know that the last of my cash will go to something fun.

The lights of the patio area we stand on are low with a calming effect that I’ve noticed out here on other nights. Behind me are the strange, cellblock-like dormitories we live in here in Italy. The lights don’t work on me now. Their glow seems out-of-place. I feel too excited for this setting.

The taxi finally arrives, one of the only two in Urbino, I’ve just learned. Anthony, Gino, Scott, and I pile in. Fiats are a funny thing to me. At more than six feet and two hundred pounds, both Anthony and I are a bit out-of-place in one. Scott and Gino, though both smaller, aren’t far less in size than Anthony and me, so the four of us make a funny sight packed into the small car with the driver. He shoots off down the dark roads.

These hill towns are, yes, beautiful, but that’s something I expected before coming here. More beautiful to me is the approach to life many Italians have. A stupid grin pulls my mouth wide as the driver whips around corners and comes inches from the rocky sides of the tiny road. I giggle like a child, but so do my three friends. We talk of how we love the way all Italians drive. The four of us are speed freaks from California and Pennsylvania, yet we find another reason to love Italy and forget, at least for a moment, people, work stress, and tight deadlines left back at home. That is the reason for this night.

I remember a comment from a few nights ago. I’d told one of our Italian contacts, Giovanni, editor of the local newspaper, that I loved Italian drivers as he was driving us to a dinner gathering. “We do not drive,” he said and raised a fist to the windshield, “we fight!”

A few minutes later, as the four of us pile out of the cab, clown-like, in Farmignano’s piazza. I try another ATM to no avail. I feel no concern this time as we turn and walk toward the hay bales surrounding the beer festival.

Laughing, Anthony and I sing along to the cover of Shania Twain’s “I Feel Like a Woman” blasting from the cover band on stage. I buy a liter stein of German beer at a beer festival in Italy, and listen to an Italian band play songs from my early teens. I laugh and so do all the other kids here from Urbino. It’s just too funny.

I meet-up with another group of American students I’d met here. I drift back and forth between our groups throughout that night, talking, laughing, dancing a little, as the memory slowly fades out.

It’s nice to live a moment like this. Three cultures intermingled, deliberately, at what is essentially a county fair. It’s beautiful here and I’ve learned so much, but I’ve been lonely for home all the same. It’s little tastes of home, like that night at the beer festival, that make this trip even more special to me. I’m seeing this experience from both angles, U.S. and Italian, and I’m very glad I’m here.