When I decided to do a road trip seven months ago from Boston to San Diego, I had no idea what to expect. I had studied abroad in Italy for a semester in college, so I anticipated what it would be like living in a drastically different place. However, unlike my experience in Italy, this was not an organized program with students my age. I was not in college anymore, and I knew it would be different. I had no job. I had no apartment. I had never even been to California, let alone San Diego. Besides traveling to San Diego with my friend from my hometown and knowing a couple of older kids who had graduated from my high school, everything else was foreign to me. I wrote a piece for the Clairemont Times when I first arrived describing a sense of culture shock. In other words, I could not believe that was I here. The palm trees. The Mexican influence. The beach and outdoor culture. All of it was and still is, surreal. As I now leave San Diego and head back to Bos...