no regret but apprecaition-Soo

There are so many things that are inconvenient about living in Italy; cold room, no heater, no internet access at home, thieves(I have been pick-pocketed last night but thank god! someone found my wallet and now I have it..) and etc. But what I realized, all of a sudden, over this weekend in Venice, sitting in the dock near the ferry port, is that I do not regret a bit about coming here to Italy because these moments I have in Italy are shaping me to become a purer thinker and creator. To be honest, my life has never been so much engaged in art before. Of course, I always liked making art whenever I did and I was more emotionally attuned than other people around but was never been oriented around the world of art.
I was raised in Korea where the educational system confine you to only three parts of the world if you are a student: school, home, and an institution(where they preview and review the subjects that the students are supposedly learning at school already). I was a very artistically inclined kid until I went to middle school and had to quit all other activities except studying (having to study 12 subjects, a couple of which are not so necessarily, since during the Japanese colonization, they intentionally implanted an educational system that is not designed to utilize the time effectively and Korean government had never changed it ever since). I had to quit playing Violin which I played for 6 years and had to stop any sports activities since I had to use all my day time and enormous amount of money to go to institutions so that I'll get good enough grades to go to college. My sense of seeing and feeling things in forms of art had been dulled and neglected ever since.
It was only after the sophomore year in high school that I found my interest and connection to art back to my life. I was lucky enough to have a family, who could financially support me for a better education in the states. In 2003, I flew over to this country of liberal spirits, with a blessed education system, in which you can study, and participate in other after-school activities and still have time to go watch a movie over the weekend and make art...and ever since I came to the states to study, the art mode of looking at the world has had its rebirth inside me.
Art still was still a very juvenile and crude part of me, but coming to Italy and being exposed to the overflowing sense of living art has definitely overgrown my mind to think and learn more about it. Also, not having sufficient level of technology has led me to detach myself from internet which unknowingly became such big part of my life and appreciate abundant natural sources that we waste so easily in the states. I feel like this mode of thinking in a primal way to connect to things around me would definitely help me focus my sense in creating art than minding what ppl write on my facebook wall or who's dating who sort of business.
Carnival and seeing ppl in costumes were all great, but above all the most valuable I gained from this trip to Venice is my realization that I should appreciate that I was given an option to come to Italy whose mother nature offers me so much to feel, observe, and learn.

the last note to Venice- Ci vediamo, Venezia :)

Here is the look into my amazing trip to Venezia and others.
* ps. the previous photos are on the same page because I could not make more than three sets on Flickr