“I went to school in Italy, what happened was I went to take an art class, because I was an art history major, and all the good renaissance art is there. So, I went to take this course that was six weeks during the summer, but I really, really loved Italy so I decided to stay. I went to a school in a different city after that to study the Italian language for a couple months and after that I just backpacked through Europe,” middle school art teacher Kerri Murphy said.
“We didn’t do all of Europe, we did Spain, Switzerland, France and obviously Italy. Those were the main four that I stayed in. I would get these weird jobs working at places like a Euro stand, just all these odd jobs so that I could make a little bit of money. I would just hop on a train when I met people that were going somewhere I’d be like ‘Oh that sounds cool yeah I’ll go there too.’ I ended up in Switzerland because all my friends wanted to go. I honestly thought like ‘Ehh Switzerland not that cool’, but it was gorgeous,” Murphy said
“We ended up going canyoning. It’s this thing where you have to drive like four hours up a mountain and then you scale down the side of the mountain into a canyon, and then you zip-line, and swim, and climb, and jump your way to the bottom of the mountain. You can only do it in seven places in the world because a lot of people die but it was a lot of fun. I was twenty and just living life, I wasn’t going to come home because I loved it so much,” Murphy said.
“I came home though because I only had one more semester to graduate with my bachelors, so I came home and finished school at UCF. I was planning on going back to Italy and getting a job as a tour guide at a museum because I loved talking about art. When my sister came and my boyfriend came or if anyone came to visit me I would be like ‘Hey you know this about this painting’, [because] I know the interesting stuff, it’s not boring…when I tell it, I promise,” Murphy said.
“So that’s what I wanted to do, being a tour guide was my plan, but the day I had my graduation ceremony to walk, I found out I was pregnant and I just couldn’t move to Italy. There was no way I could take the baby away from my parents, no way. My family is really close and there was just no way I could take the baby away from my family. Now I’m taking my youngest Paige to Paris so it’s full circle, it’s Paigey in Paris,” Murphy said.
