One Last Adventure

This has been a very long overdue post. I know I have been very slow with posts but after Spring Break it just hit me that I only had a month left in this beautiful country… blogging was the last thing on my mind. I planned to write a reflection after I got back to the States (which was two weeks ago) but 1) my laptop died on me in Italy and 2) I was just not emotionally ready to recall on my Italian adventures just yet. I still don’t think I am quite ready but now that my laptop has revived from the dead, I think it’s time.

It felt that after Spring Break everything changed so drastically. I went from worrying about what photos to instagram, what I could blog about, what cool place I could conquer next, to sitting at La Posta (the local café that some students visited religiously) just basking and being content with exactly where I was literally until dinner time (and being late to dinner) and then going straight back after dinner because I would rather have been in the atmosphere of foreignness than inside a room with people and conversations that were already so familiar and comfortable to me. I felt a lot of people were getting to this point as well.

From this I really got to develop a relationship with some Italians that worked at the bar (and those who helped out) and from that, their friends and family as well. In those last few weeks, I was finally able to grasp that “Italian culture” that I came for. I wanted to better my Italian. I wanted to figure out what it took to be an Italian in Tuscany.

They helped me figure out that what I’m learning in Italian class wasn’t perfectly translated in everyday conversation, in just THIS part of Italy (because the linguistics change everywhere you go… kinda like in the States). I learned what Tuscan aperitivo (custom before dinner drinks and “appetizers”) was and even got two aperitivo drinks named after my friend and I (The “Lucii and Kyla” and “Lucii and Kyla Parte Due” – summer time spritzers for those who need refreshment). I finally got to experience the Italian Night Life at a discoteca in Arezzo. Italian men are very forward and for the most part pigs when it comes to the bar/club scene. But I’m sure that was already a known stereotype. They showed me hands-on how to make a cappuccino and I even served a couple of them as well. I learned that the objective of drinking isn’t always what I consider it to be in the college scene. There really is an art to drinking (they have specific drinks for before dinner, during, and after dinner – the more you know!) that I am happy to bring back with me (and my friends as well – Wine Wednesdays, anyone?). Oh, and I learned how to ride a bike, finally! I can cross that off my childhood-things-that I-missed list. Who can say they learned how to bike in Italy? Well, except for the Italians.

One of my favorite memories in those last weeks was when Giulia, Federica, her aunt and parents, Cuoco, Valentino and Massimo (the sweetest old guy I met in Italy) drove a group of A&M and Kansas State kids to a Natural Park on Mount Lignano in Arezzo and had our own little BBQ. I was surprised when I saw a wild cinghiale (boar) and then they proceeded to show me all the awesome animals that were in caged pens around the park. We ate, we rolled around in the grass, we relaxed, we “played” with the animals, and well, just had fun. It was so strange to see how far we all had gotten since we first arrived in Italy.

The K-State boys decided to hold a “field day” competition between the two schools. I don’t know how but sometimes rivalries are the best ways to create friendships. There was a sense of (competitive) unity that we hadn’t had all semester, and I was just happy that it finally happened.  

      

I guess the last thing I was missing from this experience was making relationships with something, someone from Italy… and when I did it was completely bittersweet to know that 1) I had one more reason to return and 2) I was leaving them behind for an unknown amount of time. I fell in love with these people and I wasn’t ready to leave them after such a short encounter. And I’m not only referring to the Italian friends and families that I had made. I was also nostalgic for the friends that I knew I would see walking around my university. But it didn’t matter that I would still see these amazing girls and guys around College Station, but the idea that we would never have our friendship in the same context as we did in that beautiful little town. When we were ever going to just walk two minutes up that God-awful Road of Repentance to La Posta and have a cappuccino/drink? When could we just take a train to another city, another region whenever we wanted to?  

It was really difficult to take it all in, especially when the Italians had thrown all of us a goodbye party, along with a surprise good bye slideshow with photos from throughout the semester and then greeted us at the bus before we left and lit a paper lantern that floated into the sky (it was a scene from Tangled, I tells ya). Here is when I mention that I cried so much in the last three days before we left. Shenell and I decided to say our last goodbyes to all the stores around town and my goodness I couldn’t believe how sweet and genuinely sad people were to see us go. It made me think how much harder it is for the townspeople who develop relationships with the foreign students than it really is for the student. Every year these townspeople have a batch of Americans that greet their town and every semester they have to let another batch go (while I only have to worry about the one batch I have)!

I can’t say how these past four months has changed me, I honestly still haven’t figured it all out yet but there is such a passion within me that I hope to figure where to target it all. There are so much real life situations that I have to get sorted (where to live, graduate school, classes, etc) that there hasn’t been much time and space in my mind to figure it out. I have really just been living in this dream world where the surreal happened and everything was perfect.   

Coming back I just wasn’t ready. I hadn’t squeezed out everything that I needed from my short time there, especially a real emersion to Italian culture and language. But being that it was such a small amount of time to explore and learn about such a long history and diverse country, there was just no way. One thing that I advise for anyone reading this and wants to study abroad similar to the reasons aforementioned; don’t travel with an English university or a university in that country that doesn’t offer a homestay program. Although in those last precious moments I was able to be in the company of Italian social life and family life (two amazing Italian families really showed me the universal love a mom shows to those she loves), you could not pick up the language the same way, nor the mannerisms and way of living. Live with a family. Go to the bars and cafes. Talk to people. Get out of your element. “Always do what you are afraid to do” as Emerson says.

You’re studying abroad, sure, but what exactly are you studying? If you think it’s the classes you’re taking or whatever concentration you are there for (architecture, art, field studies, biology, the works), you are half right and all wrong. You are studying the country, the city, the history of whoever “Abroad” takes you. So in essence, you don’t have to take classes to go abroad. Just do it. If you get anything out of this, it’s that although I learned a couple cool things out of some really amazing professors, they were on the same boat as I, it’s not even about the classes. Hell, to hell with the classes! It’s about the experience.

The experience doesn’t have to be abroad either. I’m from Texas. I’m sure NYC or L.A. would be just as strange to me once I find my way there, and I will be just as in awe of the Statue of Liberty as I was when I saw the Eiffel Tower. Even New Orleans which is right down the street would have so much history and culture for me to soak in. Everywhere is a learning experience, so keep your eyes (and mind) open.

I promise to (slowly) post pictures and stories about the last few cities that I visited before I decided to go on an impromptu hiatus from blogging. So frequent the blog for updates on my last several adventures!

“I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” 
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland