February 1 a dream came true for me—I landed in Italy to spend the next three months studying, playing, and living in this exceptionally beautiful country. I may have mentioned it before, but Italy has been the number one country on my list of places to visit since I even came up with a list of places to visit. What I didn’t yet realize was just how special my semester abroad would turn out to be.
My current feelings are that this semester has been one very surreal moment in my life; a moment that I fear will be left here in time, only referred to as a past, closed chapter in my life that will never be fully believable. It still hasn’t hit me that I am in Italy and I have spent over three months here; I’m not sure I will ever believe it.
Remember the cycle of emotions that students generally experienced with their study abroad experience that I talked about in my first blog post? Well, I’m pretty sure I have experienced each and every one of them twice over in the past three months, and am only now coming into the “content” stage of being here. Italy has become life for me; it is familiar now, it is what I know and what I do. Now, before I’m ready, I have to pick it all up and move back to the States. I’m sure that I will transition back into life at home faster and easier than I can imagine, and that terrifies me. I don’t want it to be easy. I want to struggle to let go of certain Italian-ways and continue others even at home. I want to question and challenge my life in the States because of what I have been exposed to here in Europe.
We have completed an amazing amount of activity this semester; looking back on the many, many excursions we took and the amount of authentic Italian culture and life I was exposed to shocks me. I am finally realizing the benefits of studying abroad with a small group of people in a small town; because of it I have been fortunate enough to meet some incredible individuals and have experienced up close in person things that most will never have the opportunity to experience no matter how many times they travel to Europe. I was handed on a silver-platter the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the best of Italy, and have been more than pleased with my experience. The integration of our classes in the palazzo with our excursions as a group was done so seamlessly, each lesson learned in the classroom supported with an excursion in the “real Italy.” We were given several opportunities for independent travel which boosted my confidence in my personal travel skills, and allowed me to have a lot of fun with the friends I have made this semester. I have traveled all over Tuscany and a few places beyond; I have been connected with a fun and supportive host-family; I have met Italian girls my own age who are sweet and welcoming of the Americans who have come into their town; I have been able to help out in an Italian high school and witness a raw account of young Italian life; I have seen ceramics and paper being made; I have participated in unique Italian traditions; I have eaten some of the best food of my entire life; most importantly, I have learned something about myself and my standing in this great, big, vast world of ours—that there is so much to see and do and live, and that I want to be a life-long traveler.
I know that I will not realize the full extent of how lucky I have been, the lessons I have learned about myself and life, and of just how much I will miss it here until I am home again and unable to come back for who knows how long. Thankfully our final dinner as a full group last week opened my eyes a little bit to just what an amazing experience I have been blessed with, and therefore I have made sure to take my last week to soak it all up and enjoy it while it lasts. As the old saying goes, “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”
I will come back some day. I will return to Sansepolcro, if only to eat at the Goblin Gelateria again (hands down best fondente flavored gelato in the world). Until then, I will hold this place dear to my heart and only hope that the pictures I have taken and the memories in my head do it justice once I am home.
Our time is winding down; we’re planning final dinners, parties, exams, and last minute gelato runs. I’ll save my final feelings about my study abroad experience in Italy for my last blog post next week, and for now will focus on the last bit of fun we’ve been having. During the second half of the semester we have had the opportunity to participate in service learning with elementary, middle, and high school level schools in Sansepolcro helping teach the English classes. Everyone goes on Monday morning to their school, but because no English classes are taught on Monday morning at my school, Tecnico Commerciale di Sansepolcro (high school), I go on Friday mornings. However, because of our second travel break, Easter break, and our excursion to the Val d’Orcia, I haven’t been able to go to my school until just this past Friday. So finally now having had my first service learning experience, I’d say it was a success. I help teach three different classes, with two different teachers for about three hours. Thankfully before I arrived on Friday morning, one of the teachers had emailed me with suggestions of things I could talk about in her two classes. Since this was my first time, I spent about half of each class having the students introduce themselves, then introduced myself; they said their names, where they lived (since not all of the students live in Sansepolcro and some travel quite a long way each day for school), and what they like to do in their free time. It was obvious that this sort of conversation was one of the first things they learned and practiced a lot in their English classes, because each student had the dialogue down pat. Something I have come to realize about Italian youth is that they are very similar to American youth in the way they express their individuality through dress and hairstyles, and that their favorite free time activities include “listening to music, surfing the net, and going out with friends.” Even Italian high schools feel like American high schools—as soon as I walked in I was taken back to my days at Cary High with graffiti written on doors and desks in white out, masses of students overwhelming the hallways, teachers desperately trying to be heard over the noise, smokers congregating in the outside courtyard, and messy notebooks scattered over the desks. After going through introductions in my first class, I was asked to discuss the American education system with the students, something they were interested in for comparison purposes with their own school system. In fact, I think the teacher was more interested in hearing about similarities and differences between the school systems in each country than the students were. Italian high school students attend class from 8:00 in the morning until about 1:30 in the afternoon, where they then return home for lunch and are done with school for the day. But they do attend school on Saturday to make up for no classes being held in the afternoon. The students and teacher did not seem to be too surprised by the fact that American students usually go from about 7:30 in the morning until around 3:00 in the afternoon; what they were surprised by was the fact that homework is assigned on a daily basis and that quizzes and tests are given on a regular weekly/bi-weekly basis. In Italy, students are given one large cumulative exam at the end of the school year without much testing during the semester. Of course my teacher used this fact to try and tell her students that they were lucky compared to American students and that if they wanted, she would be happy to adopt the American way of homework and regular examinations…of course that didn’t go over with them so well.
After talking about school systems, I had the opportunity to talk about prom night! Most television and movies aired in Italy are American programs that have been dubbed in Italian; because of this, Italians are very much aware of American pop culture and unless they have traveled to the United States, their idea of American life is what they see in the media. My students wanted to know about prom night in the U.S. because they were having their very own, first ever prom night at the end of the semester and they wanted “to do it right.” They knew what they had seen in movies and on television, so they wanted to get a first-hand account from an American that had experienced prom night for herself. They asked what the girls wear, what guys wear, if a tuxedo jacket and jeans would be appropriate for guys (like I said, high school guys trying to be funny—same in any country I guess), if people went out to dinner, where prom was held, what time the dance started, what time it ended, and if students drank alcohol at prom. This last question didn’t throw me off that much because there is no drinking age in Italy, so Italians are raised on drinking alcohol responsibly and it would not have been out of the norm to see some of my students out on a Saturday night at a bar. Another reason this question did not surprise me was because some American students do drink alcohol (illegally) on prom night, as is common knowledge, so perhaps they picked up on this from movies. We also discussed corsages and how the flower or ribbon of the corsage should match the girl’s dress—to which they asked what you did if the girl wore black; that made me laugh and I just told them you could pick whatever color floweryou wanted in that situation. It was fun to think back on one of the biggest nights in a high schooler’s life and see how excited the Italian students were about having their own prom night. The more I experience Italy, the more I realize that much of human nature must be universal.
The second class I helped with is younger, about 13-14 years old and we’re practicing for their end of year Trinity exams that are coming up; these are the exams that test students on their English competency. Half of the class went into a separate room with the teacher while I stayed with the rest of the students and asked various questions about their family, hobbies, pets, etc to help them with their oral skills. My third class was the most troublesome, only proving what the teacher had warned me about before I entered the room. They nonstop talked, threw things at each other and were generally rowdy. Because of this behavior it was difficult for me to do anything productive with them, and their teacher seems to have given up hope at this point in the year, so we made it through introductions and that was about it before I left. This week I’ll be working with her more advanced level class which is better behaved, according to her. I enjoyed my time in the high school getting so see similarities and differences in the school systems and the students; I’ve been lucky with some great groups of kids.
This past Saturday we took our last group excursion to Gubbio where we ate large pretzels being sold in the market, rode up the steep mountain on a chair lift giving us the chance to witness a beautiful panoramic view of Gubbio from above, and visited the site of the K-T line where the first evidence of why dinosaurs became extinct was found. We were lucky with the weather and our day in Gubbio learning and exploring was very enjoyable.
The biggest benefit and joy of studying abroad in a small town are the unique opportunities with which we’re presented because of connections and getting to know the people in that town. One of many examples of this from this semester was our jewelry buying/cooking lesson/dinner night at the Chimenti’s house. A very friendly and generous family here in Sansepolcro invited us into their home for dinner on Monday night where we were also treated with a lesson on how to make onion soup and tiramisu. One of the Chimenti’s daughters, Barbara, makes jewelry that she had on display in her workshop for us to admire and purchase (of course I couldn’t turn down this offer and bought some beautiful earrings). After everyone had picked Barbara clean of her jewelry, Mrs. Chimenti taught us how to make tiramisu (I’ll add this to the homemade pasta I learned how to make from Patrizio once I’m home and have a complete meal!), as well as the Italian version of French onion soup, which was our first course for dinner. The “soup” was followed by pork, potatoes, zucchini, salad, and the tiramisu we had made. Mr. and Mrs. Chimenti are funny and friendly, as well as wonderful cooks so we had a great time that night.
We’re now half-way through our second to last week here, with our first exam tomorrow. Before we know it we’ll be gone, so this weekend I plan to soak up as much of Sansepolcro as possible.
