Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Missing from Me

A note for the Americans(or English speakers) (Gli italiani possono saltare questo e andare alla parte in italiano ;) :
If you've read a few of my posts, this one will probably seem different to you...maybe a little less wordy, a little less eloquent, a bit more elementary...a bit different. This post was originally written in Italian, and in translating it, I seriously considered doing a "loose translation" and writing the same material but in my usual English style, complete with all of the flourishes that I so love to use in the English language. However, after much thought, I have decided to keep the English translation as direct as possible, for the original Italian version is also written from the heart...simply in a different style than my English style. Some things don't translate well, sometimes there simply isn't a way to directly transfer from Italian to English, and I have done my best to work around this, but I wanted to pay a bit of homage to my Italian readers who have thus far faithfully tried to plug my English into google translate, warranting far less beautiful results than the original (if you want to see what I mean, go ahead and use the translate button on the web version to translate the Italian part to English, and try reading it...). Hope you enjoy this post in spite of this!



     In questi giorni, tutti mi chiedono, "cosa ti manca di più di Italia"? E onestamente, non so come rispondere. Mi manca la luce sul canale, mi mancano i minuti da sola nel treno o bus o tram con la mia musica, mi mancano i spritz...ma non posso dire queste cose...la gente vuole una risposta facile, completa. Ma non ho una risposta facile, perché onestamente mi manca l'esperienza, mi manca l'Italia...soprattutto mi manca la mia vita, il mio mondo, italiano. Però quando devo assolutamente rispondere, dico che mi manca il cibo, e tutti ridono, o dico che mi manca la bellezza, e tutti cominciano a raccontare le storie che cominciano sempre con "ah, sì, una volta anch'io sono andato in Italia, ed era bellissima..... 

     Ma se devo veramente scegliere una cosa che "mi manca di più", devo dire che mi manca la gente. Mi mancano i miei compagni che, nonostante del fatto che non mi hanno parlato tantissimo per i primi mesi, diventavano una ragione per cui ero veramente felice di venire a scuola ogni giorno...chi mi hanno aiutato con tutto, chi mi hanno fatto sorridere e ridere ogni giorno. Mi mancano i miei altri amici chi non erano compagni di classe...chi hanno scelto di passare tempo con me fuori di scuola, chi avevano il coraggio di parlare in inglese con me anche se c'era il rischio di fare una brutta figura, chi mi hanno portato in posti nuovi, negozi nuovi, ristoranti nuovi. Mi mancano le mie famiglie ospitante, che erano sempre là per me, che avevano la pazienza ogni giorno con me, anche quando sapevo solo un paio di parole nella loro lingua, che hanno parlato con me ogni giorno anche quando le mie risposte erano di due o tre parole sbagliate.....e questa è una cosa difficilissima. Mi mancano anche di morire gli altri studenti stranieri, chi erano una famiglia per tutto l'anno in cui non avevo la mia famiglia californiana. Mi hanno aiutato con le cose più difficile, hanno parlato con me nei giorni in cui sono tornata a casa e mi sono reso conto di avevo parlato solo quattordici parole nel giorno, i giorni i cui ero intrappolata in un mondo che, causa del fatto che non sapevo italiano, erano silente e isolante e da cui non potevo scappare. Forse questa lista sembra un po' tragica, con tutte le cose triste, però la vita è così...con le cose belle ci sono anche cose brutte. Questa gente mi ha aiutato con le cose brutte, ma anche le cose belle, e questa è la gente che ha cambiato la mia vita. 

     Spesso quando qualcuno mi chiede "cosa ti manca di più"  non dico "la gente" perché anche come non posso dire "i minuti nel treno" o "la luce sul canale", non posso dire "la gente". Non è abbastanza concreta, e quando dico che mi manca la gente, tutti ridono un po', e poi dicono, "ma sicuramente sei contenta di vedere la tua famiglia" o "ma hai gente anche qua in California". E se provo a spiegare, forse, che veramente mi mancano i miei compagni di classe, o che mi mancano gli altri studenti stranieri, loro sono un po' confusi, e dicono che ho compagni di classe anche in California, o che ci sono nuovi studenti stranieri adesso in California. E queste sono tutte cose vere....ho gente, compagni di classe, studenti stranieri in California. Ma non mi manca questa gente solo perché è gente. Mi mancano queste persone perché sono amici, sono famiglie, sono persone che hanno cambiato la mia vita. Non è che non apprezzo la gente in California, è solo che non posso dimenticare persone che hanno cambiato la mia vita, e non credo che riuscirò mai a dimenticarle. Tutte queste persone hanno un posto nel mio cuore, e causa di questo, adesso ho un cuore molto più grande del mio cuore un anno fa. E questa è una cosa bellissima, è solo che non avevo nessun'idea di quanto è difficile dividere un cuore tra due mondi. 





    In the last few weeks, everyone has been asking me "what do you miss most about Italy?". And honestly, I don't know how to respond. I miss the light on the canal, I miss the precious minutes of alone time with my headphones and my music in the train, bus, and tram, I miss spritzes...but I can't say these things...people want an easy response, a complete one. But I don't have an easy response, because honestly I miss the experience, I miss italy...more than anything I miss my italian life, my italian world. But when I absolutely must respond to this question, I say that I miss the food, and everyone laughs, or I say that I miss the beauty, and everyone starts to tell stories which always start with "Ah, yes, one time I went to Italy, and it was absolutely gorgeous...".

    But if I really have to choose one thing that I "miss the most", I have to say that I miss the people. I miss my classmates who, despite the fact that they didn't talk to me much at all during the first few months of school, became a reason for which I was truly happy to come to school every day....who helped me with everything, who made me smile and laugh every day. I miss my other friends who weren't classmates...who chose to spend time with me outside of school, who had the courage to talk to me in English even though they risked a "brutta figura"(an Italian idea of social embarrassment), who brought me to new places, new shops, new restaurants. I miss my host families, who were always there for me, who were patient with me very day, even when I know only a few words of their language, who talked with me very day even when my responses were composed of two or three words....and this is a very difficult feat. I also miss terribly the other exchange students, who were a family for a year in which I didn't have my Californian family. They helped me with the difficult things, they talked to me in the days in which I returned home and realized that I had spoken only fourteen words that day, the days in which I was trapped in a world which, because of my lack of knowledge of the Italian language, was silent and isolating and impossible to escape from. Maybe this list seems a bit tragic, with all of the sad things, but this is life...with the beautiful things there are also ugly things. These people helped me with the hard things, but also with the beautiful things, and these are the people who have changed my life.
     

     Often when someone asks me "what do you miss the most", I don't say "the people", because just as I can't say "the minutes in the train" or "the light on the canal", I can't say "the people". It isn't concrete enough, and when I say that I miss the people, everyone laughs a bit, and then says, "but surely you are happy to see your family" or "but you also have people in California". And if I try to explain, maybe, that really I miss my classmates, or that I miss the other exchange students, they are a bit confused, and they tell me that I have classmates in California too, or that there are new exchange students in California now. But I don't miss these people just because they are people. I miss these people because these are friends, these are family, these are people who have changed my life. It's not that I don't appreciate the people in California, it is just that I can't forget the people who have changed my life, and I don't believe that I will every be able to forget them. All of these people have a place in my heart, and because of this, I now have a heart much bigger than one year ago. And this is a beautiful thing, it's just that I didn't have any idea how difficult it would be to divide one heart between two worlds.

Monday, April 18, 2016

On Language


An Open Letter to my Italians...
On the things I haven't said



I'm Trula, and I'm seventeen years old. But you've probably never heard a seventeen year old Trula speak. If you've known me from the beginning, then you probably first heard the voice of a two year old Trula....but not a two year old who babbles endlessly about the newness of the world...more like a seventeen year old's mind...knowledge and awareness, fears and anxieties, somehow trying to express itself through the vocabulary of a two year old. I hope that today my speech could maybe pass as that of a five or six year old, but I know that I still by no means speak my age.


Is it funny to watch the voice of a toddler come out of a teenager? Is it difficult not to snicker as I use the wrong verb tense, flail in a sea of prepositions, and use ten hastily gathered words in a last-chance attempt to express one word that I don't know? I know that it must be tiring, wading through my swamp of ill pronounced, or even nonexistent words and terribly constructed phrases, and I wonder how many times I have spoken, believing that I am communicating one thing when in reality, I have said something completely different. I wonder how many absolutely bizarre things you think about me as a result of these misunderstandings.


To those of you who still try, for some reason, to talk to and treat me like the seventeen year old that I am, I wish you could know just how much it means to me. I wish you could know how important your willingness to grab lunch, coffee, or gelato, or even just converse with me, is.....it's not effort free by any stretch of the imagination for me, and I know that it's not effort free for you either, but your decision to try anyway has truly changed this year, and my life. I wish you could know how much you are appreciated, and I wish that I could tell you all of the things that I want to be able to say to you...


I wish I could better show you my sense of humor, my sarcasm, my snide remarks, my witty responses. I wish I could talk to you using the perfect words, implying subtle meanings, twisting grammar and structure, metaphor and meaning, playing with delicately placed words until they work together to say exactly what I mean......It's an art form that I never realized the existence of, let alone the importance of.....until I was suddenly left with that crappy dollar store kiddie art kit, instead of the beautiful colors and brushes and techniques that I have curated over the span of seventeen years.


There are days when I'm ready to give up....when I simply cannot bring myself to try to sharpen that stupid colored pencil that is so cheap that it breaks every time it's almost sharp, and then to try to use it to color on paper so thin that it tears if I mess up and try to erase my mistakes. There are days when it seems impossible to express how I feel in a language that I cannot yet call my own, when I am ashamed of every sound that comes off of my tongue, when my embarrassment at the inadequacy of my own words brings me to tears, and I turn away from my feeble attempts at communication, giving into the humiliation stinging my eyes. Enough. Basta.


Many adults that I’ve talked to, especially in the world of exchange, have a tendency to sing the praises of intercultural relationships.....they smother our fears about language-related difficulties with some sort of "small world" rhetoric. "Despite the different cultures and languages of the world, we're all fundamentally the same....we're all humans", they say. "The relationships that you can form with people despite a language barrier can be absolutely incredible", they like to tell us. I'm not saying that there isn't some truth to this, as I am unbelievably impressed and grateful for some of my strictly Italian-speaking relationships. However, the truth is, it is no coincidence that the two Italians that I am by far the closest with, are two girls that I have the ability to speak fluent English with. It's not that I don't ever speak Italian with them, but the unfortunate reality is that it is very, very difficult to get past a certain point in a friendship without certain language constructions. I'm sure that this sounds cold, but the next time you get together with a friend and have a multiple hour conversation, try having that conversation with words that are always used 100% literally.....a conversation without sarcasm, a conversation in which at least a third of your responses, topics, or remarks(anything that goes beyond the everyday scope of casual conversation) are cancelled in your head before they ever come off of your tongue, and you have to scramble to find suitable replacements before their absence becomes evident. A conversation in this fashion not only is exhausting, but also gets very boring very quickly.


It's the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher.....the subject matter is fundamentally the same, but one makes you like the material, the other makes you hate it. One you request for the next year of study, the other you pray that you will never have again. The native language conversation is at-ease, fun, enjoyable.....and makes you want to see that person again, to get to know them better. The conversation with the language barrier can become, all too quickly, a discourse riddled with awkward pauses and mishaps, a tiring affair which, if stretched any longer than the normal time limits of casual conversation, makes you suddenly remember that "really important appointment" that you suddenly need to get to, and you put that person on a mental list of "casually be busy next time in order to avoid her" people.


But that's where you come in.....because despite all of this, you're still there. You are there to remind me that, after several weeks of not seeing each other, you think that my Italian has gotten a little bit better. You are there, backing me up when I slowly try a word that I'm not sure if I've heard somewhere or just made up, when I mistakenly use a verb that sounds very similar to my intended one, but has a very different meaning. Most importantly, you're simply there as a friend, and I'm truly sorry that in exchange for your extraordinary patience and kindness, you hear only a shadow of the things that I want to tell you. I don't know if the Trula that you've gotten to know is a compromised one, or just a different one altogether......and although my criticizing mind tells me that it's definitely the former, I have to hope that maybe it's a bit of both.


But I know that those of you who I truly want to tell this to won't read this. Or maybe you'll try, but you won't fully understand. Because the terrible irony is that the very people who this is written for likely cannot understand this level of English, and it is precisely this level of English that I simply cannot translate into Italian. So I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I might not ever be able to tell you, and you might not ever know. But I hope someday, somehow, we'll talk without the barriers.


~Trula

Saturday, March 19, 2016

101 Days

I have 101 days

I have 101 days to use that random free hour on Friday to find a new bakery, or maybe an old favorite (although the concentration of bakeries in Trieste means that I never run out of new ones), and bask in the delightful simplicity of a €1 brioche.

101 days to force Meg to take photos with her full face(if we can stop laughing long enough for a photo), 101 days to finish "The List" with Gaia even though we are absolutely terrible at crossing any of the items on our "Bucket List" off, 101 days to make the most of the fact that only a €4.75 train ticket separates Quinn and I from being crazy foreigners exploring Italy together.

101 days to don the classic Italian all-black "night out" garb ("I look like I'm going to a funeral, but for some reason in a leather jacket", I declared the first time), and get swept away in music and laughter...an experience that I know all too well is not particularly cohesive to small-town-USA life.

101 days to walk into school excited, because while the lessons may be terribly boring, every day I get to see the people who, 6 short months ago were people that I was afraid to talk to, who 6 months ago watched a strange new girl walk into their class and attempt to introduce herself with nonexistent language skills, who know that to this day, each conversation with me will be a bit broken and require a bit more effort, but who choose to talk to me anyway. A family which I have come to appreciate to no end.



I have a countdown calendar on my phone set to "July 5". That date is the single thing in the near future that I am most looking forward to, and the single thing that I dread the most. Every particle of my being wants to see the people in my Californian life that I've learned to appreciate so much, to sprawl on the couch in a way that one can only do when they are truly at home. But at the same time, every particle of me wants to stay here and be the person that I've become in the life that I've created with these people that I love in a place that I've internalized............forever.

I left California with my heart more or less in one piece, but I have since allowed it be ripped into pieces that have been scattered among people and places on the other side of the world. I have ripped my heart with only the fragile hope that the pieces have not, in fact, been torn beyond repair, but instead will slowly heal---never to be one complete organ ever again...to be always longing for the other pieces, but for each resilient piece to be beating, to be alive. They say home is where the heart is, but if the heart is scattered, do you have multiple homes, or are you never truly home?

The first sentence of this post is "I have 101 days." That, and nothing more. When I say, "I have 101 days until I go home", my soul constricts because it knows that I have tangled it too tightly in the life that I have built here to truly call just one place home. It knows that when I go, it, like my heart, won't have the comfortable liberty of leaving in one piece.

And this is the price that I have paid, am paying, will pay, for this opportunity. I have gained so much beauty, so much experience, so much vitality in these short months, and I will undoubtably take a piece of this home with me....but I cannot take a piece of this life with me without leaving a piece of myself in this life. And this is a thing of wonder, a thing that terrifies me, a thing that makes me want to run away from it all, but always, always, makes me want to return, to explore, to be alive in the truest sense of the word.

I have 101 days.
















Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Buon Natale! (Just a bit late)

I have been in Italy for over 4 and a half months, and that's not really something I like to think about too much. It's all too easy to start worrying about the day when I will be wrenched out of this little world that has been created in a far away land, an adventure that seems to have just begun. But that's for another day, another time, another post.

I have had the privilege to spend the Christmas holidays in Italy, an experience that I will never forget, both for its joys and sorrows. The winter holidays are considered by many to be one of the hardest time periods for exchange students for several reasons. The most obvious reason is that in many countries in the world, the winter holidays are associated with unique celebrations that very often center around family and togetherness. All you have to do is plug into social media for a day somewhere around Christmas time to be flooded with a never-ending stream of "SO happy to be home again!" "It's great to finally have the family together again", and "Nothing like a Christmas surrounded by family!". We even have the iconic phrase "Home for the Holidays", to drive home the importance of family and being home around Christmas time. So clearly when you happen to be just a little far from your family and loved ones during this time period, not only is it personally difficult to be away, but it is also difficult to accept a season of new traditions, new celebrations, and an absence of the special little things that have made the holidays the holidays ever since you were a young child.

Many of the exchange students found ourselves sitting at home just a few days from Christmas, realizing that we had never felt so un-christmassy in our lives. None of us could put a finger on it, but there's something about the compilation of little things we barely notice.......the bustle of baking, an annual holiday open house, picking out a tree, christmas fairs, seeing the stockings hung on the fireplace, dress up days at school, packages coming in the mail...........
And this is not to say that Italy does have its own celebratory traditions for Christmas....if anything, I might argue that it is an even bigger deal in Italy than in the United States, but I still found myself uncharacteristically somber on December 23rd , wondering if it was possible that Christmas Eve was the next day.

But enough slightly dreary reflective stuff for now, because Christmas in Italy is a great celebration that deserves a blog post for its amazingness.

In Italy, Christmas Eve is arguably as celebrated just as much, if not more, than Christmas Day. On Christmas eve, it is traditional to have a large dinner composed entirely of seafood. Of course, I know that every family has their own way of doing things, and I had no idea if my family would celebrate traditionally or not, but they truly came through with a fantastic Christmas Eve feast. Christmas Eve was celebrated with family, including aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, and food. Lots of food. We barely ate lunch on Christmas Eve in preparation for the dinner feast, and this turned out to be a good thing, because for dinner we ate no less that 7 different seafood themed dishes: smoked salmon, shrimp, roe pate, scallops, lobster, seafood risotto, and sea bass. The meal was amazing, and truly unforgettable. Gifts were also opened on Christmas Eve....apparently it is traditional to wait until midnight, but since we were graced with the presence of a toddler, that wasn't exactly realistic.

On Christmas Day, I traveled with my family to Padova (Padua) in order to eat a Christmas lunch with a different side of the family. This lunch was also unbelievable huge, and consisted not only of some seafood leftovers from the night before, but various different dishes containing meat as well. 



Christmas Eve dinner preparations
Christmas Eve dinner
A tiny portion of the seafood that we ate that night
Gift-opening time!

Christmas in Italy is without doubt a celebration which embodies two of the most important cornerstones of Italian culture: family and food, and I am so grateful that I got to partake in it.