Thursday, December 3, 2015

"Ciao! Non parlo Italiano...wanna be friends?"

If you read my October post about school, you would know that when I first started school, one of the biggest challenges for me was making friends. It has been two months since that post, and things have changed quite considerably, to the point where I wanted to write another post about the social situation here. I will be doing quite a bit of name dropping throughout this post because I want to give these people a little shoutout, but also because I always find it interesting to hear typical names in other countries, and I think it makes the whole thing a bit more credible. So here we go.


Exchange students tend to lean on each other for support as we are the only ones who truly understand what each other are going through, and so back in October when the social aspect of things was much more rocky, I was telling my wonderful exchange friend Alida about how it was much more difficult to make friends than expected. She responded with the perfect wisdom that has stuck with me and proven very true. When I told her that people just did not seem to want to open up to me, she asked "Trula, is it just you that they don't talk to, or do they not talk to each other in general?" It certainly didn't make me feel any better to answer "Umm...it's just me....they are all nice to each other", but she replied "but Trula, right now you are a new kid, an outsider. If they are nice to each other, then it's only a matter of time before you are one of them, and they are nice to you too". This has stuck with me, and although I still don't completely feel like "one of them", it is much more so, and it is certainly proving to be a "matter of time".


So why has this magical transformation of friendliness begun to take place?

As I have gotten to know a few of the students in my class better, I have begun to ask them about the beginning, about how they saw me, and about our mutual inhibitions. Through this, I have learned that while there was certainly a degree of shyness involved in the relative coldness of my class at the beginning, there was also, to a large degree, the issue of the collision of the language barrier and "bella figura", the idea that one should only put forth and promote their best self at all times, while avoiding activities/things that might ruin or muddle their image. For my Italian classmates, even though at first I didn't know enough Italian even to basically communicate, speaking to me in their less-than-perfect English put their "bella figura" in danger, and thus was something to be avoided. These days, I can often communicate more or less what I want to say in Italian, and a few of my friends have let their guard down enough to help me out with words that I don't know, but there are still a large number of classmates who do not want to potentially embarrass themselves by using English (never mind the fact that I am publicly embarrassing myself every time an Italian phrase comes off my tongue). On the upside, this means that there are a good number of my classmates who would prefer to speak to me slowly and simply in Italian rather than attempt English, which is good for my Italian learning endeavors. On the downside, I think that this was one of the reasons that it was more difficult to make friends before I had the Italian basics down, because when you can't talk to someone, friendship is a whole lot harder.


In my opinion though, the main reason, which I think is deceptively simple but incredibly important, is that by the time we reach high school, most of us have accumulated a reasonable group of friends through various means, including family, school, and extracurriculars.

Having this comfortable network can cause us to forget how hard life might be if you were suddenly stripped of that network and had no one to call when you had a boring weekend coming up, had no one to make standing in the bathroom line less awkward with, had no one to default to when fragile plans fell through and you suddenly needed someone else to go to an event with.

And upon arriving here, stripped of that network physically, I honestly think that most people just had no idea. Had no idea that when the play finished early, I didn't have a group to join to go grab a coffee with. Had no idea that when everyone was making plans to go see the concert, that I didn't have "my people" to default to that I knew wanted to go with me. Had no idea that in gym class, choosing partners or forming groups was suddenly stressful, not fun, because I didn't have those friends that you could make eye contact with across the room before the teacher had finished speaking, automatically forming your group.

In the same vein, then, I honestly think people had no idea that when Milena wrote "ti voglio bene" on my hand and invited me to go out for lunch, it was the first time, after a full month of school, that I thought I might one day actually fit in with my class. That when Fabiana invited me to go for a walk in Trieste, it was the first time that I had hung out with a classmate and had it just feel like maybe we could be two friends, not the just the weird american girl with an Italian,...the first time that there were conversation topics that didn't start with "so, in California.....", the first time that I thought that I might actually become real friends with people in my class, not just be "that American girl". That when Federica actually responded to my text and agreed to meet me for lunch, it meant the world to me because for that day I had texted 5 different people, and she was the only one who said yes when most of the others didn't even bother to answer me. That when Gaia invited me to her house to attempt a cooking adventure, it was the first time I had been to a classmate's house, the first time that I had been able to reasonably carry most of a conversation in Italian, the first time that I thought I might actually be able to be real friends with someone who I didn't speak in English with.

And just because it's gotten better doesn't mean that my excitement about people reaching out has ceased.....it will never stop making me feel accepted and unbelievably excited and when someone says hi, shares a joke with me, invites me to do something, or says in some other way, "Hey there, I know that your Italian isn't great, and neither is my English, but I don't really care and we can be friends anyway".


I have recently switched my schedule such that I now visit different classes throughout the week, and this has given me the opportunity to meet even more people that bring a smile to my face every day. I am so thankful to Ilaria, Diana, and Claudia from one of my new classes, 5H for showing me that not everyone is too worried about their bella figura to open up to a new person right away by creating a group message with me that makes me laugh every day. I love that Debora and Giulia from another new class were willing to bring me to try a special holiday street food, fritelle, even though they don't really know enough english to have a conversation, and I don't know enough Italian to have a non-awkward conversation.


Though Thanksgiving has come and gone, I feel like it is always a good time to be thankful. I am thankful for how much better its gotten with my friends, and on the other side of the coin, I am thankful that it is still difficult, because every time that someone reaches out to me, I am filled again with an indescribable joy, a small child's giddiness that just makes you want to jump up and down for the sheer fun of it. And if it weren't for the hard times, I wouldn't be able to appreciate the good times nearly as fully....I wouldn't be over the moon with excitement every time I was invited to do something. And I'm sure that some people think I'm crazy for getting this excited about things that are just a regular part of everyday life for everyone else, but honesty I don't care, because I've always said that the best people in life are a little crazy. Plus, if you could live every day with soaring excitement over little things, why on earth wouldn't you?