Good nature, good food and good people

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Buon Giorno,
Today is a beautiful day in Italia. I am lying in the grass covered with daisies. Next to me one of our cats is lounging and purring, her pregnant tummy soaking up the sun. The birds are chirping all around me. Life is sweet.

I just returned from my long weekend in the mountains. My experience was full of beauty and adventure but also with a bit of internal conflict. For this reason, this blog entry may sounds a bit more pensive and a bit less comical.

I headed out Thursday morning. My bag was brimming with all of the warm clothes I have, a sheet, a towel and a borrowed sleeping bag. I was wearing a rain jacket and rain boots. I was ready for the mountains. I caught the 7am train and got to the train station in Rome around 9am. At the station I met a women named Antonia whose info I got from Claudia, the head of the organization. We met and she drove me to her house where we switched into her boyfriends car and headed out of Rome. Antonia is a really cool person; she comes from Napoli but lives in Rome for work and her boyfriend who is from Rome. She is a vegetarian, the first I have met in Italia, she is a nature researcher an environmentalist and I would say a feminist as well. Her boyfriend, Alessandro is great as well, he is a bit quieter but a good person.
So here I was, in the car with these two new friends of mine driving up to volunteer in the mountains and listening to Johnny Cash, Alessandro’s favorite. It felt like a road trip with my friends in California on the way to one of our camping trips. When we stopped at a gas station Antonia bought a CD with typical music from Abruzzo, which is the region we were in. She also made Alessandro buy the water bottle made with vegetable products; it was the first time either of us had seen one like it. Anyway the rest of the car ride we “got down and funky and we did the little monkey” (as dad would say) to some good old Abruzzesi music.

When we got to the site, we unloaded the car and met the rest of the group. In Total, there were 14 of us. 13 Italians and me. Of course, this looks like my perfect dream, just me and a large group of Italians. In many ways it was my perfect dream, its what I have been looking for and asking the universe for but it turned out to be more difficult than I expected.
Anyway we met everyone, all of whom where likeminded and fun people. I met Claudia who is the head of the program and who I had been emailing back and froth with. We talked in Italian together and I felt really comfortable with her. We all had lunch together then headed out for a hike. But Claudia left right before the hike, she only organized the camp but didn’t participate in it, which was a bummer because I wanted to get to know her and I was a bit nervous to be left with all of these Italians who I just met. The hike was short because it was raining. It was really beautiful though. The mountains were covered by fog and snow and most likely hiding the bears who are still in hibernation. We saw a few packs of deer who are more tentative and wild than the deer in California. There are also foxes in the park and a type of mountain goat, specific of the area. So the hike was nice and I talked a bit with a guy who spoke perfect English. It was nice to speak English a bit because I was able to understand and connect with him on a deeper level than if we were to speak in Italian. We agreed on a lot of things concerning the environment and the importance of nature.

I guess the hardest thing for me was connecting with all of the others in the way that I really wanted to. Finally I was surrounded by a group of likeminded environmentalist Italians and I wanted to connect with them but I felt so inhibited by the language barrier. I know of course that language is a superficial thing and from a more spiritual point of view you don’t have to speak the same language to connect with people, if you are really meant to connect. But it was really frustrating. When I signed up for this volunteer camp, when I packed my bag and when we drove there, I was not nervous at all. But once I was there I was asked myself, “what the hell where you thinking?” Not only did you sign up for a long weekend to work with a bunch of strangers, many of whom already knew each other, but also you signed up to volunteer in a completely different country and a completely different language. I am glad that these thoughts didn’t come to my mind before I left, they are all thoughts of fear and doubt that I don’t need in my space anyway. But while I was there, in the middle of it, these feelings started to surface. But I am a master at hiding my feelings and painting on a smile. So in the beginning I was the quite, sweet, Americana smiling in the corner. As the weekend went on I got more comfortable and loosened up a bit and my companions got to see a bit more of me, but they never got to see the other parts of me. We never got to speak in depth about our shared passions for the environment and political justice and on a more basic level, I never fully understood their jokes and I was never able to share with them mine. I felt a bit like a little kid who just wants to make friends and fit in, who pretends she is a big kid who can read and understand the jokes that the big kids make. It is scary the power language has over people. I could go off on a whole tangent on this now but I will keep it short and only say, this makes me think of immigrants around the world. In many cases they are treated as children or even as less than people. This language barrier and living in a different country brings me so much compassion for all immigrants. I get a small glimpse into what it must be

like and yet, as a middle class American, I will never fully understand.
Francesco, the one who spoke perfect English liked to stay close by and help me out when I didn’t understand something. Well, I think it was partially that he wanted to help include me but also he wanted to show me, and the Italians how well he could speak English. In case you couldn’t tell from my other entries, I don’t like speaking English and I rather speak Italian. This has been a big struggle for me for the 6 months I have been here and I just now am seeing how selfish it is. Sometimes I meet people who really want to practice English just as much as I want to practice Italian, but instead of recognizing this, I get angry and frustrated. Instead of accepting each situation as an unspoken deal, an exchange of language, I get angry with the person and with myself. Just now, I am realizing that maybe they really want to practice English and maybe they are not just speaking it with me because they think I cant speak Italian. However, this particular Francesco was not the case. I could tell by the way he spoke English with me, by the way the others interacted with him and by the way he played guitar that he was a bit arrogant and I didn’t want to spend the whole time around him. But I felt a bit trapped and he seemed to think he had a sort of power over me and that he was my bridge to the others. But this was not the case, I understood more than he gave me credit for and I could speak Italian better than he thought. But when he was around he would not budge, he only responded to me in English and but the end I was tired of it. Also, the more he spoke English to me the more the others seemed to think I could not speak Italian, so by speaking English with Francesco I felt more isolated.
Antonia also speaks good English and she legitimately needs to practice for her job, but she understood me and how I was feeling so spoke to me in Italian and a bit of English. But with her and some of the others, who really did want to practice English, I was happy to help and I thought it was really sweet that they were trying.

As the weekend went on I separated myself a bit more from Francesco and spoke Italian with individuals while we worked or on our hikes. I realize it is easier for me to connect with people one on one in English and especially in Italian. My first target was a boy from Napoli. There was a group of four twenty year olds from Napoli who were all friends; this one was the most quiet so I felt comfortable to talk to him. So the first day, while we cleaned up trash from the side of the road I talked with him. Later that day I targeted his friend whose name is also Antonia. The next day I made my way onto Manuela who is from the north of Italy where the accent sounds almost German. We both share a love for plants, so we were trying to Identify plants together and I told her my passion for herbs and alternative medicine. Later on I talked to Sergio. He is in his mid-forties, has a boring money related job and looked like an over prepared German tourist, ready to climb in the mountains. Sorry if I offended anyone with that list of stereotypes. Anyway, despite what I saw on the outside, he was a really sweet person and easy to talk to. He comes from Lecce which is in the region of Puglia and taught me some of the dialect. For example lets go is andiamo in Italian but it the area of Lecce it is nammo, with a stress on the a. he also helped me with a bit of Italian and tried to slip in the few words of English he knows. He also told me about his love for nature and how in the summer he likes to go into nature alone for three or four days. The others were also really nice people but I didn’t talk to them as much. The group from Napoli took me under their wing the last day when they realized I needed saving from Mr. I speak perfect English.
Besides my internal conflict with this barrier, I had an amazing experience. We only really cleaned up trash the first day. The rest of the time we ate amazing food and went on amazing hikes. We would get up around 8am, have coffee and biscuits, a common thread that connect people from every region in Italy. Then after much processing in between 13 Italians we would eventually get out the door, Lucia following the crowd, smiling of course. After we cleaned up trash the first day, about half of the group, including me, hiked up a mountain that quickly led us into snow. We walked along the snowy path trying not to slip and listening to the river beside us. The end of the trail led right up to a beautiful waterfall fresh from snowmelt and drinkable. The next day we hiked a rocky mountain. The few surrounding trees were bare and the winter wind was off and on, not quit making up its mind if it was time to let spring in. But spring was popping up all around in the most delicate ways. The moss on the trees offered a rich smell and deep green color. Small green flowers with leaves that reminded me of home because of their resemblance to Marijuana were popping up all around. Little purple flowers poked up between the rocks as well, surprisingly increasing in numbers as we climbed closer towards the snow. We didn’t quit make it all the way to the top, we stopped when we saw a huge herd of deer just far enough away as not to disturb them. Behind the deer, snow still remained on the mountain and as I looked out in the opposite direction I could see other snowy, rocky mountains protecting the peaceful lake at their base. We returned for lunch, which was at least a two-hour community process. I told them I wished I could cook them something but that I was nervous and traumatized from my roommates, so I stuck to setting the table and cleaning dishes a couple times. After lunch we would go on another hike. Another hike we went on was right near by and up to another amazing waterfall, so strong and yet so peaceful. Then we would come home and do the three-hour dinner process. I say process but really it is art, it is fun and it is truly one of the bases of Italian culture.

No matter who you are, not matter what region you come from, food is always a topic of discussion. If I was in the same situation in America I’m sure we would have packed a sandwich and ate on the mountain, then for dinner made something easy. Instead of eating on the mountain, they discussed and argued what we would make for lunch, then they would make the lunch for about an hour, then we would eat for at least an hour. It of course always turned out amazing no matter what ingredients we had lying around.

Another thing that Italians share is generosity, in the sense of hospitality and sharing food. While I packed a stash of chocolate and fruit for myself, everyone else brought goodies to share from their region. I felt like such an asshole secretly eating my stash of fruit and not sharing.

Our last night we went out to eat at a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere. The owner was crazy and welcomed us all in with a speech. Later he went on to play guitar and even act out a theatrical scene typical of Napolitano Theater. All of the food was typical of Abruzzo. Our first course was a platter of different meets and cheeses decorated with a piece of lettuce, which no one ate expect for me. Then came an amazing bean soup. Then we had the biggest homemade ravioli I have ever seen with ricotta and a walnut sauce. Then we managed to stuff down some cake and some alcohol dispersed in between all of this. The meal was amazing and so fun, four hours later we stumbled out from food and or wine coma and returned home.

We left on Sunday after lunch; I drove back with Antonia, Alessandro and Manuela who had to take the train from Rome. The ride was fun again and when we got back we ate some dinner then went out despite looking and feeling disgusting. Our dinner consisted of leftover soup that Alessandro strained into a five liter wine jug, but of course bread, meet, potatoes, wine and bear accompanied it. We headed out around 11pm. Our original plan was to take the bikes, actually I kind of invited myself when I heard of this plan. Anyway we ended up walking because Manuela was not feeling well. Rome was silent and barely anyone was out. We walked by the Trevi fountain, by the pantheon, the Coliseum and of course all of the amazing ruins full of history. I felt so lucky to have that experience that I am sure not many people get the chance to have. It was weird to be walking in a city, which is usually packed with people, now deserted and quiet. We got home four hours later but I didn’t even feel tired it was so amazing to be out in Rome with my new Italian friends.

Anyway, my weekend was really amazing and I feel so lucky to be having so many amazing experiences and to be learning so much along the way.
Miss you all, baci baci

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