WRiting Traveller Portfolio
Patrizia
The first time I contacted Patrizia, the only thing I learned was that she had a dog named Boris. I didn’t know if she was married, had a family, was young, or retired. So, in January, when I climbed the three flights of stairs to her home with two other strangers and a suitcase, my head ached, and my stomach churned with nerves about whether we would even be able to communicate. However, I knew that I wanted my semester abroad in Florence to be as Italian as possible, so I elected to be in a homestay early on. Four months later, I’m confident that my two strangers and I made the best decision we could have.
At our first dinner, my roommates and I tried to keep my stomach from overflowing from the incredible meal of chicken, potatoes, pasta, and salad. As she loaded our plates, she introduced herself by clarifying that she had never been married. Instead, she has her current principe: Boris, the incredibly well-adapted rescue dog from Sicily who loves Tuscan bread soaked in oil. While we complimented the chicken, she told us it was prepared by her sister’s family, living on the ground floor of the building. She is intimately close to them, and we got all the gossip about her two nephews during the dessert strudel.
Patrizia is a person who is “diversamente giovane.” She has a youthful spirit, and like my grandmother, she insists on feeding us until we can’t walk. Every night at dinner, we tune into game shows and the news. She talks to us in a mixture of Italian and English about Italian politics, culture, and customs. Early on, she taught us to make Tiramisu, a recipe that we have put into practice and committed to memory. She recounts stories of her worldwide travel during her career as a travel agent. She advises us on what to do and see during our trips, always pointing out the foods specific to each region, like the Sicilian favorite: arancini al pistachio.
In the beginning, I tried not to become too attached to Patrizia because I knew that it would make saying goodbye so much more difficult. Our time together has always had an expiration date, so I’ve tried to savor it the way I delight in her unique pesto with parsley. But, on the morning I left for spring break, she stroked my face with her hand and pulled me into a hug, wishing me good luck. As she gave me a motherly squeeze, she made me to promise to eat, be safe, take care of myself, and update her along my journey. That was the first time we had ever hugged or that she had even touched me. But the physical contact was all it took for me to give up on building a wall between us. I submit myself tempting and dangerous dessert that is human connection. Once the nibbling began, it became harder to stop. From that day on, I’ve cared about her the way I care for my family. I think about her daily, miss her on the weekends, and can hardly wait to tell her about my day over a bowl of risotto.
But, after I leave Florence in a few days, the odds that I see her again are as slim as the sliced prosciutto she uses for (my favorite) pork Saltimbocca. She is not the most responsive to phone calls or texts, so I don’t know what to expect if I try to maintain this relationship forever. And as young as she feels, there’s no denying that she is an elderly woman. I don’t know when I’ll return to Europe and whether she will still be around.
I don’t know how she does it. She’s been a host mom for countless students for nearly a decade. Like a wedding cake baker, she puts in the time to create something perfectly delicious; then, she sends the cake away without enjoying it. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, she repeats the process over and over. I don’t understand how she puts herself through that torture year after year. Surely, it must break her heart to foster kids for months and then say goodbye.
On the other hand, while my homestay has given me a chance to play pretend for a couple of months, there’s no denying that I will never be genuinely Florentine, Tuscan, or Italian. Even if Patrizia has opened her home and invited us to be her family members, I still cannot integrate into the country. Like a chef awaiting a critic’s review, I feel uncomfortable and judged in the streets, in stores, by the neighbors on the second floor who glare at me every time I trip on the stairs. Even Patrizia’s family gives me the cold shoulder, greeting me passive-aggressively, if at all.
I am unwelcomed by the rude and impatient Florentines. I stick out like the toothpick in Patrizia’s kebabs. Noticeable to a certain extent, but if missed, I am a painful stab in the Tuscan cheek. Every time I try to speak Italian, the locals immediately switch to English. No matter how fast, slow, or courteous I am on the sidewalk or in a business, I receive suspicious and irritated looks. I tried my best to meet the Italians’ high standards for fashion or street etiquette. But I’ve given up because I will never be good enough for the Florentines. I’ve had far more hostile experiences on the streets of Florence than anywhere else I’ve been in my whole life. I was even yelled at by an Italian woman outside a supermarket, just for accidentally bumping her with the exit door.
Like a drop of vinegar on a plate of oil, I am too different to be absorbed or mixed. Because of this, I’ll never affect Florence or change it. But the experience has undoubtedly changed me, damaged me, like oversalted food. I’ve learned much more than the other students staying in the pensioni. My homestay has widened my worldview and opened my eyes to some of the ugliness of romanticized countries. Patrizia has opened our eyes to the economic crisis, the drawbacks of having such an elderly population, and the fascism that corrupts the government. I’ve noticed the prejudices the Tuscans have against the rest of the country and witnessed their arrogance. By living in a less touristic part of Florence, I’ve encountered the world that the Florentines look at with disdain. I’ve been the very subject of the hate in their eyes. I have seen the mess Italians see and that people sticking to spaghetti and meatballs wouldn’t notice.
Cold Lunch
Meghan and Anna made their fish-themed juice boxes kiss again, and Amelia and I burst into laughter, flooding the otherwise silent train car with noise. I could recognize how obnoxious we were being, and that there was nothing funny about a fish-themed juice box, but I was too caught up in our silliness to stop. So, we munched on our packed lunch of crackers and chocolates until we arrived in Rome, ready for the tour that the school had arranged for us. There was no time to separate ourselves from our elated moods to try assimilating into Rome. Rushed from site to site, with hardly a moment to catch my breath, I could not take in the centuries of history before me. We were more concerned with taking photos for social media or sharing them with our families than with looking at the subject of the shots. Meghan punctuated the silly pictures with “For the mems!” but the memories were never about where we were or what we saw. Rather they were about how much fun we had playing “smash or pass” with the Roman statues at the National Museums.
On a walk in the Spanish Quarter, I talked to Anna about how I’d been struggling to find my place in Italy. She was bewildered, “Oh man, I gave up on that like two days into the semester. They can tell right away that I’m not from here, so I figure, why bother trying? It takes a load off your shoulders when you stop putting yourself under that pressure.” I nodded and thought back high school.
High school is known for being the place where teens start to discover who they are. But it’s a difficult place to do that when there are such high expectations for who you should be. You overestimate the weight put on you by parents, teachers, and other students and put yourself under an extraordinary amount of pressure. I spent far too long pretending to be someone that I wasn’t, just to fit into a certain mold. But the day that I finally decided to be the person I wanted to be, regardless of what anyone else thought, I felt so much better. I found myself in the company of people who brought out my inner child and made me feel comfortable. Anna made me realize that being in Italy is like high school. So, I gave up on inventing an Italian-passing version of myself. I contented myself by accepting that no matter how many people I fooled, I would still be separated from them. I would be lying to myself, and everyone else. My new friends helped me turn the stress about not sticking out into a joyful celebration of tourism.
With my new mindset, and a sense of relief, I stuck with my travel buddies for every minute of every day, hardly able to ever stop giggling. The dogs we passed were declared lions by the group. The cats were fuel for giddy applause. Cheering, “When in Rome!” was the weekend’s anthem. Occasionally, someone would let out a gasp or a “wow,” hit with a feeling of awe in the historical city. But rather than soaking in that feeling, it was followed by the laughter of the other girls; having our breath taken away felt silly. There was no way to express our feelings of wonderment except with belly laughs that made our lungs hurt, and we were happy with that.
The cheer I felt and will forever associate with Rome will not be about the town's youthfulness or the overwhelming effect of seeing the Colosseum and the Vatican City on the same day. I didn’t fall in love with Rome because some childhood dream of visiting the ancient city came true or because the spaghetti alla carbonara I’d had in Trastevere was life-changing. But I fell in love with Rome simply because it was the place where my friends filled me with glee. Like the sack lunch that I carried with me, I brought myself and my feelings. I simply had an internal experience in a new external location. There was nothing wrong with the warm juice and potato chips in my lunch; they were familiar and comforting, and my trip was still fun even if I didn’t make an effort to see what lies beyond the “Cats in Rome” calendars.
El Taxista
I scooched forward in the car seat, trying to keep my sweaty and sticky legs from making contact with my mother and brother on either side of me. My wrist ached as I fanned myself with a paper pamphlet from the hotel concierge. The car was silent except for our heavy breathing and the fans. The air was still, hot, and wet–indistinguishable from the sweat gluing my shirt fabric to my back. Breaking the silence, my brother complained about his empty stomach. The taxi driver replied that he knew the spot to take us. I suspected that he was just trying to rack up the bill, but concentrating on the humidity’s effect on my ability to breathe, I kept quiet. On the journey, my parents reminisced about going there on their honeymoon. The cab driver claimed it was his uncle’s restaurant. I couldn’t tell if he meant his actual relative or a friend, but it was all the same. The cramped Toyota bumped along a back road, riding beside a fence that kept crocodiles from getting out of the creek outside Puerto Vallarta. We saw cats and cows and varying wild agave species, a deviation from the neat rows I was used to seeing when driving past Tequila.
When we finally arrived, I rushed to crawl over my brother, hoping to feel cooler by escaping from back seat. There was something different about the air next to the restaurant. It was sweeter. Instead of being still and stuffy, the air circulated, tingling on my skin. I was no longer drowning in the damp heat, gasping for air, but could finally breathe deeply. As we walked through the restaurant’s facade, I felt a sudden chill. The ocean breeze drastically lowered the temperature under the covered beachside restaurant.
Following in my parents’ footsteps, I peeled my socks and shoes off and felt the sand under my feet, squishing between my toes. It was soft, cool, and moist–a relief after wearing my hard sneakers with no ventilation all day. The restaurant looked abandoned except for the lizards hiding in the shade of the thatched canopy. We walked past groups of lonely white plastic tables and chairs to the penultimate table in the restaurant. It couldn’t have been more than twenty yards from the crashing waves.
A boy, no older than sixteen, appeared at our table and greeted the taxi driver, who was to share in our family dinner of icy drinks and several kilos of grilled fish. The boy waiter would continue to appear and disappear sporadically as the afternoon turned into evening. I put my hand on my stomach, knowing it would fail to quell the rumbling, but trying anyway. With the slow service and such a large order, I thought I would starve. There was just no way the food could be good in an abandoned place like this.
My stomach got louder and my mind foggier by the second as I heard my parents and the taxi driver chatting. Below the table, I played with the sand, building up mounds and stomping them down. I listened absent-mindedly to their discussion but kept my eyes on the ocean, watching the waves rise and fall in the distance, collide, combine with each other in the midground, and turn into white foam that reached out to us before retreating into that bright blue. Their rhythm lining up with the beat of my heart.
Finally, interrupting my line of thought like the distant driftwood disrupting the wave pattern, two massive trays were loudly set on the table. The fish were fresh off the grill and had an intensely divine scent unique to any fish I had ever smelt in the past. Hunger moved my hands to make my fish tacos with the hot and fresh tortillas, squeeze the lime juice on the fish meat that slid off the bones effortlessly, dump beans and salsa onto the flesh, and shovel the tacos into my mouth. With the first bite, I became hyper-aware of all my senses engaging with each other. The food was exquisite. The lime brightened the flavor and sweetened the fish. The salt in the masa of the tortillas enriched the taste. It was savory but somehow refreshing. It was sweet and salty. It revived me and demanded my attention. Five tacos later, I was full, but the trays looked almost untouched. My father and the driver teamed up to encourage the rest of us to help clear the dishes.
With the cooler air, beautiful beach setting, and my full stomach, my mind was finally clear enough to engage in my parents’ conversation with the driver. They talked about Mexican politics and how the country had changed in the past 25 years. The driver told stories about the “Americanization” of the city, offering insight into life as an individual who encounters more tourists than Mexicans in his daily life. My parents opened up about transferring their lives to America, letting him in on the family drama. He listened attentively and offered advice. At one point, I turned to my brother and said, “We just met this guy, and now he knows more about mis Tias than I do.”
He responded, “Mia, this is crazy! Who else has ever met a rando and invited him to dinner? Only Dad would,” we laughed and began an independent discussion, hypothesizing about how cool it would be to report the story to our cousins in a week.
Hours later, my father paid the bill against the vibrantly colored twilight. Everyone but the driver had enjoyed some Don Julio before we left feeling elated. Finally, the driver took us back to the Nuevo Vallarta resort we frequented, and wished us well.
As my family took advantage of the hotel pool’s late hours and relaxed in the water, my brother and I continued to talk about how the dinner had far surpassed our expectations. I mentioned my nerves about having a meal with a stranger. My father overheard and began to give a lecture.
He told us that we had finally seen the real Mexico. We had traveled back and forth between his home country and where we were born for our entire lives but had rarely lived the way he did as a teenager. Being American and separated from Mexico made it so difficult for us to connect to local life, and both my parents wished that we would be able to see and feel it more often. Our dinner with the taxi driver had been magical and transformative. It opened our eyes to a side of Mexico, a part of our culture, our heritage, and therefore a piece of ourselves that we had never seen before.
In the states, we were teased for our lunches of ensaladas de nopales that resembled green worms, the tamales in their organic banana leaf packaging, and for putting lime and Tajin on all our fruit. To assimilate, we swapped out the exotic flavors for blander white bread, ham, and cheese sandwiches. But acceptance, fitting in, is different from belonging. My parents had it worse. They have changed so much that they no longer feel truly Mexican, but their accents and upbringings keep Americans from ever welcoming them.
But the Mexico that I had known before the dinner was also different from my home. It was more colorful and more expansive than what I had grown accustomed to. At that dinner with the taxi driver, I finally permitted myself to talk to a local, to engage with the country. I felt a part of myself awaken, and that part of myself felt no shame in existing, in being Mexican. I began to belong.
But it ended too quickly. We were already back in a resort, a place where white people, American tourists, outnumbered us; as usual, the workers were Mexican. And at the breakfast buffet, we picked between refried beans or frijoles de la olla.
Valé, Madrid
I was salivating looking at the massive sandwiches and other dishes located two feet away from me on the other tables packed into the tiny tapas bar in Madrid. We had waited twenty minutes in the rain for a table. We could barely understand the eight-item menu and couldn’t hear each other over the volume of the young people laughing and drinking together. I shouted our order of Spanish cocktails and a small variety of menu items at the young waiter. Ten minutes later, the table was crowded with authentic bocadillos and tapas. I eagerly dug in and grew more satisfied and thrilled about the next taste with every bite. The flavors were bold and rich. It was no wonder why there was a line of Spaniards forming outside. Despite being the only tourists in the restaurant, I fit in–better than a puzzle piece, more than just another cloud in the sky or wave in the sea, there was simply no other place I was supposed to be.
The art museums, palaces, and bars were fun and exciting, but every experience I paid for couldn’t hold a candle to the conversations with the busy waiter at Melos Bar. He stayed at our table for five minutes before our food even landed. He should have been focused on other things (like the teens throwing food at the wall), but he was excited to tell me about how tapas began as a way to keep bugs from landing in their beverages. Then, he came by to check on us as we slowed down on the food, and he distracted us from our painfully full stomachs by briefing us on how sangria began as a way to keep people from getting too drunk on wine every day. Then, as we finished our meal with cheese and fruit jelly, he came back around for another chat, this time about Madrid’s iconic bear and strawberry tree.
I listened to him speak with more attention than any lecture I’ve ever attended. His Castilian accent and Spanish lisp were so light and airy; they greatly contrasted the weighty bread in our zapatilla sandwiches. His eagerness to talk about Spain was as contagious as a baby’s laugh. Over a final round of drinks, he told us about the restaurant’s struggle with covid. I wasn’t surprised. In such a cramped space, it was impossible to try and stay open. I mentioned my parent’s restaurant in America to him. There’s a universality to working in a restaurant, and whenever you find someone who recognizes it, a bond immediately forms. I left a lot unsaid, but at that moment, we were strongly connected, sharing in an understanding independent of our backgrounds.
Though I’d never been to Spain and still have so much to learn about the country’s history and culture, I fell right into place. Even with the difference in dialects, the sing-song vocalization and rolled “R’s” transported me back to my home. The Madrileños’ vivacity and color radiated in bright smiles and easy laughs, reminding me of my family’s cheerful energy and my home countries’ friendliness.
Our week in Spain was ending, but there was no denying how quickly I settled into the relaxing and safe sensation of being home. Madrid was something new but also familiar. My connection to the city through my ability to speak the language and some historical overlap made the transition easy but no less exciting. Still, my trip was even better because the city wanted to connect with me too. I was the addition of a supplemental harmony in a choir, experiencing Madrid like someone from a smaller Spanish town might have, destined to be there from the start. It was a quick visit to the big city, but the best visit I could have had. I felt as though the city wanted to adopt me, incorporate me into a paella-like medley–a proposal I would accept in a heartbeat.