Study Abroad Column - The Daily Texan

Trip to Rome one of most memorable life experiences

by Paul Carrubba

We just took off from Newark airport. Our plane gains altitude as we speed past New York City. I have never seen so many buildings all huddled together like a forest of gleaming metal and glass. The plane is headed east. One of the last things I see of America before heading into the endless expanse above the Atlantic Ocean is the Statue of Liberty. My face tightens and my eyes twitch as I try to fight back tears that refuse to be stopped.

I don't well up because I'm already missing the States only three hours into my trip. l well up because the Statue of Liberty was the first thing my great-grandparents saw when they were making the reverse of the journey I'm about to take. l'm 20 years old, and I'm on my way to Italy.

It's early summer in 2005, and I'm part of the Rome Study Program, a study abroad course that is part of UT's French and Italian Department.

For almost an entire academic year, around 30 Italian students have been preparing for this trip. We would be spending almost six weeks in the sun-baked Italian capital with optional trips to other towns and cities across the country. We are to stay with Italian host families spread throughout the city.

To this day, those six weeks in Italy are the longest l’ve ever been out of Texas. It took me a long time for that idea to sink in. Especially now that I look at classmates in my graduate program who are taking two-year journeys from their home states, and in some cases, home countries.

Being uncomfortable a long way from home is probably the best way to learn. The distractions associated with an old life or an old situation melt away as you find yourself adapting to a new one.

Studying abroad, for me, was an exercise in shedding preconceived notions. l think I had this rosy view of Italy as the paradise of my ancestors, but the reality was much more complex. l sank my teeth into the most delicious produce I’ve ever eaten, swam in the most beautiful water and caressed stone bricks that more than 2,500 years worth of hands have caressed before me.

But I also witnessed governmental inefficiency on a scale I'd never seen before, got shaken down by transit cops and walked along walls that were only held up by dirt, soot and ugly, filthy graffiti.

The hard, bare truth is that studying abroad will probably be one of the most memorable (and fun) experiences of your entire life, but it will be, at times, extremely frustrating.

Being immersed in a language that is not your own is pants-wettingly frightening. It took many, many tries to figure out how to properly order a piece of pizza (”ohhh, by the grarn!").

But it also teaches you to think swiftly on your feet. Each misstep is an opportunity to create another folder on your brain's hard drive.

As I mentioned before, studying abroad is all about the dichotomy of good and bad, and even though I probably experienced a million little annoyances, that's all they were: annoyances. I had the time of my life.

I witnessed a massive soccer celebration in Genoa immediately preceded by a matinee play of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Italian.

I drove a small motorboat around the island of Capri and swam in the deep azure of the Mediterranean. I arm-wrestled a burly Romanian in a hotel lobby (at least that's what my friends told me later; for the life of me I can't remember doing it).

The one thing that studying abroad taught me was that everything is nuanced. There is no black and white. You cannot have the beautiful without the ugly, the sweet without the bitter. You have to take life as it comes. For every missed bus and every moped that nearly runs you over theres a flawless work of art or a plate of linguine alle vongole. Life is too short to let it be ruined by the little annoyances.

So when a bar owner keeps his bar open past close so you and your friends can hang out a little longer, then offers you your 10th Sambuca, you take it, because life is good.