Getting on the plane is the hardest part. It was hard when I studied abroad for a month, and it was even harder this time around as I had only purchased a one way ticket to Nice, France and had absolutely no idea when I was returning to my home in Pennsylvania. John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” played quietly over the radio as we pulled up to my gate, only serving to remind me of how much I’d miss those Pennsylvania roads this summer. It was June 12 and after a tearful goodbye with my mother at the Newark, NJ airport, I was on my way to a great something.
The Road to City Camp
I would spend a few nights staying in a hostel in Nice and then would head off to teach at summer camp in Italy for three months. I was working for an alliance called ACLE, and every two weeks they would circulate hundreds of English teachers around the entire country of Italy. Everyone who worked for ACLE seemed to have a different word for what us staffers were. We were tutors, teachers, counselors, and sometimes babysitters all in one.
I had no teaching experience aside from working for an adventure camp for a week and was still uncertain as to why of the hundreds of applicants who got rejected, they decided that I of all people was a good match. I didn’t know why they chose me, but they did and I was about to head off to see what exactly that would mean.
Orientation
Orientation was a whirlwind week of learning camp songs and dances on a hotel roof, practicing lesson planning, simulating certain scenarios that may or may not happen while teaching, relaxing in the pool when the day’s work was done, and getting to know a group of 40 or so trainees who shared my same worries.
In our orientation groups, our leader asked us to write down on a note card what our biggest fear about teaching for summer camp was. Upon getting accepted I had read that sometimes trainees who don’t seem fit to teach were dismissed from the program and I had a lingering feeling that I would be one of these unlucky expats. I jotted down on the note card “failing orientation” and handed it off to our leader.
On the final day of orientation our leader sat our group down and handed us back the note cards that we had originally jotted our biggest fear down on. Apparently, I had already overcome my greatest fear of failing orientation. Maybe I’d be okay at this.
Treviso
After orientation week ended, a bus to Milan, a train to Venice, and then another train landed me in my very first summer camp of Treviso. I was paired with two other teachers, one of them my Canadian roommate from orientation named Abigail and the other a British girl named Olive who was also a first-time teacher. We shared an apartment owned by our camp director-host-mom Rosella who lived in the penthouse above us with a balcony that looked out over the rust colored roofs of Treviso.
Italian Dinnertime
Every night, we ate dinner with Rosella and our host sister Chiara on that balcony. Dinner was always three courses and lasted hours. We started the meal with pasta. Carbonara, lasagna, mushroom ravioli, pasta fagioli, and even bucatini with pesto. There were never any leftovers. Following this, our host mom either brought out a plate of fine French cheeses accompanied by honey, or prosciutto with melon that was crisp enough to stand alone. Lastly, we had gelato, sorbet, or fruit with hand whipped cream.
Sometimes our host dad joined us for dinner, sometimes he worked late into the evening. On one night that he joined us he told a fascinating story about how in World War II Treviso had been completely flattened by allied bombings, but with money provided from The Marshall Plan they were able to rebuild nearly everything. I found it fascinating that money would be spent to rebuild the exact thing that those funds had gone to destroy only years earlier.
“Boh” said our host dad. Boh, I’ve learned, is the Italian equivalent to ‘it beats me’, ‘I don’t know’, or even ‘I could care less’.
“It was a good thing, I suppose”, said Rosella, “it helped to end that horrible war”.
Our host sister Chiara reminded me of my own seventeen year old sister in that she enjoyed sassing her parents with every given opportunity, “yes, very, very good mamma that our city was destroyed”, she said with an eye roll.
“Chiara, la guerra, the war, it was,” our host dad paused, his English was the worst in the family’s with a wife who taught English and a daughter who went to a full English submersion secondary school, “it was per il bene superiore”,
“English, papa, Olive and Abigail don’t know what you say,” said Chiara, rolling her eyes at her dad once again.
“What is the translation?” asked Olive.
“Boh, I don’t know the English, it’s a phrase,” responded Chiara, “For what’s better, no matter the problem.”
“Like, for the greater good?” I said.
“Oh yes, for the greater good,” said our host mom, “Chiara, see, it’s the same in English,” Chiara rolled her eyes again.
“They chose Treviso to attack instead of cities like Roma or Firenze because in cities like that you have things like Mona Lisa, the Vaticano, the Colosseo, the duomo, but in Treviso we don’t have too many beautiful things like this,” explained Rosella.
“Basically, our town is shit. No priceless art, no priceless buildings, disposable everything,” said Chiara, “and everyone knows it.”
“Chiara!” scolded our host mom.
“Boh,” responded Chiara, skillfully maintaining the same level of sass for the entire conversation.
Per Il Bene Superiore
After spending my first week in Treviso, I came to disagree with Chiara in that Treviso had plenty of art and beauty around every corner. My class of seven year olds may have been horrific, but the place that I was in made up for it. Every day after class the three of us would go exploring. Treviso was close enough to Venice that there were plenty of canals and even a main river that ran through the middle of town. There were old markets, churches, and buildings that easily looked like they had never been destroyed. The thing that I came to love most about Treviso was the music.
One night when my host family wasn’t around, our host mom arranged for the three of us to have dinner with our two camp assistant directors Lidia and Maria. They were each in their early 40’s and insisted that we eat at an outdoor bar with live music that was apparently their favorite place in town.
A cover band performed English songs with an Italian flare that appealed to me. As the music flowed, so did two rounds of Aperol Spritz and an aperitivo to accompany them. At most bars in Italy, if you order a drink you can get a free or cheap plate of appetizers. This one consisted of arancini balls, fried olives encased in ground meat, a bruschetta with tomatoes and another with beef carpaccio, an array of fried fish, and focaccia bread with sardines and cherry tomatoes. We ate as the band played on.
They played many different artists ranging from Elvis to Billy Joel, but the song that caught my interest was a particular John Denver tune that I almost knew by heart.
“Almost heaven, West Virginia,” sang the female lead, “life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze”.
“Oh,” said Lidia, “I remember the tutors at last year’s camp loved this song.”
“Yes, they sang it with the kids all the time!” said Maria.
My class wouldn’t know it, I thought, they hardly knew how to say what their name was in English. I felt a moment of sadness. Although I loved Treviso, my class was terribly difficult to manage. I didn’t want to blame them for how bad they could be, I hardly knew what I was doing and didn’t think I ever would.
American Music, Italian Classroom
The next day, I decided to put the tune to the test in controlling my uncontrollable class. I introduced the idea of learning some American music to my students who met me with blank stares and low comprehension. There was no way this would work, I thought.
I went to Youtube on my phone and began playing the song.
“Si!” Cried my student Luca. Luca was possibly the most troublesome student in class as he had a hyperactive disorder according to Rosella, but his English was arguably the best. “Country roads, take me home, to the place, I beloooong”, he belted out.
The other students shushed him, they wanted to hear the song, not Luca’s rendition of it. “Stai zitto, Luca!” Shut up Luca. Luca wouldn’t shut up, even after the song ended he still would belt out the chorus randomly until Rosella learned of his antics and scolded him in the camp office. It will forever intrigue me that an oh so American song could have such popularity in Italy, even with a seven year old.
As my time in Italy progressed I soon realized that at Italian summer camp you’d always find at least one of the American counselors trying to sneak “Take Me Home, Country Roads” into the day’s work and as soon as that popular tune came on, it was like a right of passage for all of the American counselors to start belting along to it. This became such a tradition that the Italian helpers often knew the lyrics as did campers who had been coming to camp year after year and most likely heard counselors before us enacting the same ritual.
Castelfranco
Our time in Treviso ended much like it started, in a train station with Rosella. Olive was the first to leave, she was headed to a sleepaway camp in the mountains that would be her final camp with ACLE. Me and Abigail however had yet another camp together that was practically a town over from Treviso. Admittedly, I’d miss my first class. I learned a lot from them even though I doubted that they learned much from me.
Rosella drove us to the train station, and after a 30 minute train ride we arrived in our second camp of the summer in the town of Castelfranco. So much of Italy is pictured as Tuscan villas glazed in climbing moss and rocky Mediterranean sea scapes, but this town was nothing like the latter. It’s skyline was filled with sushi restaurants (my host brother’s favorite cuisine), a shopping mall, condos, and construction. It felt like home. The school that I was assigned to this session was a renovated monastery that gave off contrasting vibes with hanging crucifixes and little statues of the Madonna beside SmartBoards that reminded me far too much of the horrors of middle school. It was rumored to be haunted, and there was even one room that our young camp director Ana refused to set foot in because as she put it, the devil lived there.
Ana and her husband picked our group of five English teachers up from the train station and brought us directly to her favorite bar in town for our camp meeting. For the record, camp meetings typically happened in the staff rooms of schools.
Whiskey
“We need alcohol for this meeting, yes?” said Ana as she ordered us a round of whisky shots. Unlike Rosella and the directors of my future camps who I had yet to meet, Ana fell well into the Italian attitude of life and ran the best, most relaxed camp I had yet to teach at.
We chose our classes, I fought for the oldest group after teaching my crazy class of hyperactive seven year olds in Treviso. For the first time, I’d be teaching at the secondary level.
“Break will be 15 minutes, but it may be an hour sometimes, I don’t care,” Ana scribbled notes as she talked and sipped a pint of beer.
Abigail texted me, “FUCK yes” as Ana spoke. We were equally excited for our laid back camp director.
“Now, time to get serious,” said Ana. She looked up from her notes and scanned our faces across the table, “who has done water games before?”
Water games in Treviso had happened, but it didn’t go all too well. The kids tracked plenty of mud through the hallways that generally pissed Rosella off and ended abruptly after my troublemaker student Luca intentionally whacked another kid in the face with a bucket. I wasn’t looking forward to another water games.
“We have,” said Abigail, looking over at me with a glimpse of horror in her eyes.
“Same,” said Alec, a 20 year old from England who had shown up to the train station lugging a backpack and a cello with him.
Ana grinned, “Well, last year a naughty level eight student hit the principal with a water balloon and she told me not to do water games again,”
“Oh thank GOD”, said Ida, an over enthusiastic Texan.
“Let me finish, darling,” said Ana. “I don’t like the principal very much. I am in charge. Water games is happening.”
“But if the principal said no,” started Ida.
“It’s happening,” Ana responded.
And so, water games was happening.
Spritz Aperol
A week or so later, water games happened. Although I tried to run class as normal, lessons turned into my students begging me not to douse them in water like their last teacher apparently had. I made no promises. I dismissed my class for our two hour lunch break ordered by Ana and headed to the staff room to meet my coworkers. Alec already had the bottle of vodka circulating between everyone. Alec had one of the best tastes in music of anyone who I had ever met and typically took over the aux during breaks. Today he played a melow, remixed version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” loud enough so that us counselors could hear it, but the students couldn’t.
“Is drinking at camp really a good idea?” asked Ida.
“Hell yes,” responded Abigail.
“I’m not even sure if the vodka will cut it,” said Alec as he took a shot.
With that, we decided to put our packed lunches aside and escape camp for an hour for some drinks before water games. My host mom somehow came to the conclusion that I was vegetarian and went out of her way to pack me a meal consisting of some faux meat every day. It was a sweet gesture and I didn’t have the heart to correct her, but I wasn’t vegetarian.
We headed to the bar next to camp and ordered a round of Aperol Spritz. The last time I had had one was in an entirely different setting in an entirely different town, but this Italian staple cocktail was definitely a favorite of mine.
Ida had one, Abigail had two, Alec and I split a third. In a hazed state, the five of us walked back to camp singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. Each of us was at a functioning level of drunkenness that would make water games the best day of summer camp ever.
Water Games
Ana cornered us as we walked back in through the camp gates. She smirked, “I see that you’re ready for water games.”
“Some more than others I think,” said Alec.
Ana laughed, “me too”.
Water games was meant to be an English learning activity. In an ideal world there would be structured games that would have the end result of soaking Italian children to their bones in water and sending them off with a bit more knowledge of English. That was never the case, especially in Castelfranco.
With all of the Italian students already running around the field in swimsuits, we prepared for war with an arsenal of water balloons, squirt guns, and buckets.
Alec was the first to fire. He hit a level five girl with a water balloon before the onslaught of water started.
“SI, AQUA!!” cried all of the students as they charged towards us. It was a particularly hot day at camp and the majority of students were thrilled. I grabbed a super soaker, prepared for battle.
After what felt like hours of water related obstacle courses, screaming Italian kids, and an enthusiastic level four student dumping a bucket of water on Ana, water games was in full swing. My class of thirteen year olds was the least excited about water games. They seemed worn out by everything. My class was small and male-heavy, it consisted of six boys and only one girl.
At first my lone female student seemed to absolutely hate class. I tried to engage her as much as possible until finally by the end of the week she fit in well with the boys and even seemed to enjoy the slight power she had over them. She was still shy, but her English was improving and she most certainly was coming out of her shell. I wondered how much I had a part in that and hoped that I had helped her out in some way.
The last activity of water games was a camp favorite: water battle. It was each level versus the other in a dodgeball game of sorts and with kids ranging in age from six-fourteen, I had faith that my class of the oldest kids in camp would take the prize: free gelato from the bar next door. As the battle commenced I realized that level five was easily taking my level eights down. I sprinted back to our counselor arsenal and grabbed the last resort weapon: the hose.
I turned it on and sent water cascading over the fence towards the kids. Finally, I handed it off to the sole girl in my class hoping that she’d know what to do. In the beginning of the week, she would have given it back to me, afraid of causing any commotion. But this wasn’t the beginning of the week. She took the hose with confidence and used it to help my class win the water battle.
All of the kids ended up getting gelato, but level eight will always be the winner in my eyes. As our final trick, us teachers lugged buckets of water up to the scaffolding around the school and Ana gathered all of the students below, telling them it was for a photo. They all smiled and looked up at us, prepared for the “photo”.
“Three, two, one!” we cried, and then doused them in water.
A Good Teacher
The kids dried off and their parents came to pick them up. I went up to my classroom to clean up the damage. Alec and I both rode bikes to camp and typically left together so he followed me to my class and sat in one of the kid’s seats.
“I really hate kids”, he said as I dusted off the chalkboard. This had become one of his main catch phrases as he seemed to throw this fact out into the open almost every day.
I laughed, “yeah, same”.
“Maybe you do, but I think you might be the favorite teacher here,” he responded, “I mean with that hose trick today, insanity.”
“Please,” I said, “kids don’t like me, in my last class I had a student literally bike away during a lesson.” Yes, this student had been Luca.
“Yeah? seven year olds suck, that doesn’t mean you do too,” responded Alec.
“That still doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing,” I said. I truly didn’t. I had minimal training and only Treviso prior to this. Part of me was here for free travel around Italy, but still a part of me lingered that had more humble reasons. I had parents and host families tell me that two weeks of summer camp was the equivalent to a full year of English classes in school; had seen students go from not speaking a word of English to having conversations with me; I had a handful of students even tell me I was the best teacher they had ever had in my three months, but I still wasn’t convinced. However, maybe I was making a difference in these kids lives. Maybe this all meant something bigger than me and bigger than anything I had ever done before.
I never thought of myself as a good teacher. I didn’t like kids that much and I always felt out of place teaching lessons, but if there was one thing that I loved it was this experience and the people who I was sharing it with. Maybe I was a bad teacher, but through the ups and downs I loved every second of it.
“I don’t think anyone knows what they’re doing,” said Alec, “that doesn’t mean we’re not good at it.”
Amaro
After Castelfranco, I traveled far into the rocky alpines of Northeastern Italy for my third camp to a tiny town called Amaro.
The word Amaro in Italian is a particular type of liqueur known for its uncharacteristic bitterness and full bodied flavor. It would follow regional dishes like wild boar and horse found in the jagged mountains of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, fresh greens, and one night, a Hawaiian pizza made in a brick oven by my host dad.
We had yet to see our host dad use the pizza oven off of the front porch, but tonight was a special occasion: it was my roommate Tatiana’s 22nd birthday. An insignificant age celebrated in a significant place. Our friendship was based solely on the fact that we were assigned to the same host family and shared a ski chalet on their property that had to have been built in the seventeenth century if not earlier.
Supper in the Mountains
Every night at dinner Tatiana tried to flirt with our host dad and uncle. She spoke no Italian and they spoke no English, which made me the awkward middle woman, speaking both fluently and attempting to translate her flirtations without ruining a marriage or her job as a teacher.
The night of her twenty-second birthday arrived. It was the start of our second week of camp with a director who knew nothing about running a summer camp and everything about running a farm. Two and two did not seem to equal out, and she enjoyed blaming nearly everything that happened at camp on myself and my outspoken counterpart from South Africa, Aneeka. In equal amounts, we disputed almost every decision that our boss made.
It was my third summer camp, my boss’s first, and although our boss asked for assistance she hated the advice that we’d give her and in turn, despised us. Being hated by a director gave me a strange amount of confidence that I hadn’t had at my previous camps. I still didn’t see myself as a good teacher and had a class of twenty twelve year olds who didn’t seem to understand a word of English.
Our camp director somehow caught word of the party that Tatiana was having for her birthday and warned us that the festivities must end by nine. We reported this update to our host family who looked at us like we had just said a coworker was murdered.
“Ma que quando inizia il divertimento!” Said our host mom. That’s when the fun starts.
We agreed on that and on the fact that our director didn’t exactly have to know when the party ended, considering she, unlike the rest of our tiny town and camp family, wasn’t attending
Tatiana’s Twenty-Second Birthday Party
That evening, our host mom organized a table setting for thirty while our host dad fired up the brick oven. Every night at dinner was lively. Amaro was a town where not only did everyone know everyone, but everyone was somehow related and all wanted to be part of the festivities. Our camp helper and ride to school was our host dad’s cousin’s daughter; our resident drunk, zio vino, was our host mom’s great uncle. He rolled through to dinner every night with two bottles of homemade red wine and a little dog named Perra. We met uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, and cousins of cousins of grandparents once removed.
Our host siblings, aged twelve and fourteen, poked the dog Perra, trying to get him wound up and excited for the night. Aneeka arrived first as she was sleeping over in the chalet on a cot that my host mom set up for her. As our host family prepared the estate, we prepared ourselves with a bottle of Amaro and a bottle of Prosecco that I had picked up in town from the only store within a ten mile radius of us. Zio vino, our drunk uncle, would be bringing five bottles of his homemade wine that night and every other guest seemed to have the same idea and brought plenty more.
We changed from our red camp t shirts to the night’s attire. Aneeka and I wore dresses that would be questionable yet okay at Sunday mass; Aneeka wore lace shorts and a crop top because, as she put it, she had a chance with one of her student’s dads.
People came by in the dozens, and at nine o’clock when our naive camp director told us to end the party, the festivities began. Our host dad and uncle made batches of Italian pizza in the brick oven; pizza with prosciutto and arugula, pizza with cherry tomatoes and olives, pizza with tuna and capers (zio vino’s favorite), pizza with fresh basil, and, by request of me, Tatiana, and no one else, classic Hawaiian pizza with chunks of pineapple and prosciutto.
We sat at the table shoulder to shoulder with our Italian family and friends and ate our pizzas. The Italians questioned how good the Hawaiian pizza would be, but were certainly more intrigued than disgusted. The wine flowed and by the end of the night Tatiana could hardly stand up. We sat Tatiana on a bench between her two main crushes that would never be fulfilled – our host uncle and her student’s father. We then joined the children for a rousing game of hide and seek around the estate like the good counselors we were.
Myself and Aneeka along with our two other co counselors snuck away from the game for a smoke break. In America I don’t smoke cigarettes, but in Europe it seems like the culture to develop a short lived cigarette habit around friends only. As we walked along the dark country roads of Amaro, my host brother snuck up and scolded us in fast Italian for leaving the game. And then, using his favorite English phrase, said “fuck you”, laughed, and then tagged me, I had officially been caught by the seeker.
Aneeka, his teacher, sighed and said, “I think the only English he knows is ‘fuck you’ and ‘ball breaker’,” as his host sister, I could definitely agree.
The party ended around midnight or one a.m., and after helping our host family clean up a bit Aneeka and I helped our stumbling friend Tatiana inside where she plopped down into our host family’s massage chair located conveniently inside our ski chalet home.
“I think I have a chance with our host uncle,” slurred Tatiana.
“The only unmarried man you’re into these days,” laughed Aneeka.
The next morning, we’d get to camp hungover and have to act like the okay teachers we were around our student’s once again. In class that day I would put in a movie for my students like a real teacher surviving a nasty hangover.
Our camp director didn’t ask how the party was, in her broken English all she could stumble out was “it was over at nine?”
“Yes, yes it was.”
Cirie
I said goodbye to our camp director a week later. She responded with “Have a good life”, how pleasant.
That night after dinner with my host family, I hugged Tatiana goodbye, kissed my host mom goodbye, and boarded an overnight train to Sorrento where I’d spend a week with my visiting mom and aunt. After that, I’d take yet another train then bus then bus then car to a camp in the outskirts of Turin known as Cirié.
Countryside
My host family’s home was quite literally off of one of those John Denver esque country roads paved by dirt and perfumed by cow manure. And yes, like the song implied, it was almost heaven. My bedroom was tiny; it backed up to the kitchen where delicious Italian cooking often wafted through my door and the window opened up to a view of the barn where cows mooing would act as my alarm clock in the morning. The only wall hanging was a small crucifix beside the closet, classic of an Italian home.
Talent show day for my final summer camp of the season had arrived. The first week of camp was just ending, and I was the level eight teacher with a group of thirteen year old students. The majority of my class maintained a certain too-cool-to-care vibe that I often noticed in the Italian tweens who I taught. They were sassy, yet so hilarious in their antics that it was hard to be too mad with them. As the oldest kids at camp, my director was adamant on having a few of my students perform in the talent show. She hoped that unlike the younger students they may do something entertaining. I could agree with her there.
That morning before lessons began, I described the show to my class and practically begged them to sign up for something. Although a sweet person, my director at this camp was rigid in how things were run and if she wanted older kids in the talent show, she’d go to whatever means necessary to make it happen. My class hated the idea of performing. I was met by eye rolls and them whispering in Italian about how stupid the show was every year.
“But teacher, that is for babies”, said Alessio. Alessio had some of the best English in class, but was possibly my second most up to no good student.
“Noooooooooo”, whined Davide, my most up to no good student. Davide had a tendency to wander into the level six class to hang out with his equally troublesome brother.
“I’ll look stupid!” cried Elisa, who was in love with our 17 year old class helper Edoardo and most likely didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of him.
The Talent Show
As the impending afternoon show began looming in on me, I figured bribery may be the best course of action. The camp’s favorite activity was market day, where the students could use fake camp money to buy things like DVD’s, candy, toys, and books. Most of my level eight class had been coming to summer camp for all eight years and were major savers (or, had functioning photocopiers at home). Alessio flaunted the fact that he had a wad of almost $900 in his backpack. I had about $300 left to give out to my students.
“Ok, class. Whoever has the best talent gets $300!” I prayed that this may sway them.
“Siiiiiiiiiiii!” cried Davide, beyond excited.
My students began signing up and my director asked me to be a judge. twenty minutes before the show, Elisa, Davide, Alessio, and a few of my other students were all signed up to perform.
I took my seat at the judge’s table beside my co-counselor Andrew and a student “guest judge” from level five.
Andrew was an American from Virginia who used his degree in theater from UVA to go on to teach English in Spain for a year. He had a flare for constantly sassing me, especially when my students would do something particularly bad, the mess hall lunch was less than desirable, or when our director asked us to fit an egg into a balloon for an egg drop competition. Our families were friends and as the sole bilingual among everyone, I was once again the resident google translate. He thought my class was hilariously naughty and shared the hope with my camp director that they would participate in the talent show.
The festivities began. A group of girls sang “Jar of Hearts”; another group danced a balet; one boy had a hoverboard that he rode around on; one put on a magician’s hat and did card tricks; one little girl tap danced; and then my students Mario, Alessio, and Davide took the stage. I was honestly a bit nervous to see what my students had in store.
The tune to the popular Italian song “Oh Sole Mio” started playing, and just when I thought my students would actually be singing an opera, Mario and Davide began screaming out the lyrics. While performing the screamo rendition of the song with the others, Alessio sat on the floor and constructed a lego car. I wasn’t quite sure what talent this was supposed to be, but the students and teachers alike were roaring with laughter at the boys’ rendition of the classic Italian song. Alessio finished the car in record time and my students took a bow before leaving stage.
“Teacher!” Alessio said as he hopped off the stage, “for you!” Alessio handed me the little lego car that he had built.
On the table in front of me was what would turn into a momento from my final summer camp and class. I skated the wheels across the table. The lego car had tiny red and blue lego bricks, a plastic window, and even a miniscule lego man tucked into the sole seat. Maybe I wasn’t such a bad teacher afterall.
The talent show ended and I packed up my bag to take back to my host family’s farmhouse. I sat down on my bed and began digging through my bag, searching for the little car. I couldn’t find it anywhere. So much for something to take away from my last class, I thought.
Momento
The next morning I sat my students down on a bench for attendance, when out of nowhere Marta pulled me aside.
Marta was a level six troublemaker who knew hardly any English and according to Davide, had broken Alessio’s heart one summer ago.
“Teacher, guarda!” said Marta. In her hand, she had the little lego car from Alessio that I must have left on the judge’s table. For once at camp, Marta had done something without the intention of causing trouble. I thanked her and tucked the car safely into a small pocket in my bag. This time, I had no plans of losing it.
The Palm Reader
After my first week of camp wrapped up, I had the weekend somewhat free. This particular weekend, my family drove me even farther North into the mountains bordering France on a stomach churning ride up country roads that landed us at a friend of a friend’s family barbecue. The wooden house was completely encompassed by misty mountain views and greenery that spanned far into the horizon. It reminded me of the hills that I backed up to in Pennsylvania, yet far more exquisite. Deep in the heart of these Italian Alps, a family gathered for an authentic meal that I was lucky enough to be a part of.
Although Italian food is often categorized together in store aisles and on menus, I’ve found that each region of the country is different from one another. My current post of Piemonte was known for it’s more rugged mountain cuisine that I would experience today and was completely diverse from the fish and lemon specialties of where I had been a few weeks before on the coast of Campania.
Naturally, I took a seat at the kid’s table when food began to circulate. As a teacher I was used to spending the majority of my day with kids, especially ones who hardly spoke any English. Our friend of a friend started a coal fire pit in the yard and grilled fresh meats and some of the cured sausage, the rest of the sausage would be eaten in raw slices or spread onto crusty ciabatta bread. Bruschetta with tomato was passed around as was creamy polenta, a salad fresh from the mountains, and ample red wine.
After everyone had eaten their fill, myself and my host mom walked along the country roads into the little village beside us who appeared to be in the middle of a Renaissance fair of sorts. Italian people from the village dressed in traditional clothing and acted out what may have happened in this village 200 years ago; shoemaking, sheep shearing, metal working, and even fortune telling. I expected to run into no other English speakers, but there in front of a metal working display of all things was Andrew.
“Andrew?” I said, trying to catch his attention.
He spun around, “Oh my lord, Giacomini!” He pulled me in for a tight hug. My host mom was equally thrilled to see him and joined in the mini reunion.
Andrew’s host brother and mom had gone off in search of the fortune teller, he explained, so he joined our walk around the country roads.
Eventually, we relocated Andrew’s host family who had somehow acquired my host brother. My host mom scolded him accordingly for leaving the barbecue.
“Might as well get my fortune told,” said Andrew as his host brother finished getting his palm read.
Andrew sat at the bench and the fortune teller studied his palm.
“Di dove sei?’ asked the fortune teller. Where are you from.
“é di Virginia”, he is from Virginia, I said, as always, the translator. This seemed to have sparked the fortune teller’s interest.
“Denver, si?” said the fortune teller.
“No, that’s Colorado,” responded Andrew.
“No,” responded the fortune teller, “Il canzone”, the song. The fortune teller began humming along to the tune of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”.
How could this be possible, I thought. He knew “Take Me Home, Country Roads” yet absolutely no English.
On cue, our host brothers began humming along to the tune that we ingrained into their brains over the course of camp.
“West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home, country roads”.
“Si, Virginia”, said the fortune teller, proud of his connection.
“Si, Virginia,” responded Andrew.
Drive the Little Car in America
The final day of camp was always difficult, but this class made it especially hard. It was all of my students’ last camp; Cirié’s final level was eight. As the closing show wrapped up I gathered all of my students on a bench to say goodbye. Elisa was the first to start crying, eventually the others joined.
“What’s wrong, Elisa?” I asked, knowing full well that she was sad for the same reasons I was. Summer was ending and she wouldn’t see most of these people again.
“I don’t want camp over,” said Elisa.
“Me too”, I said, getting choked up.
“Drive the little car in America, teacher,” said Alessio.
I laughed, “of course.”
My class was silent for a moment. I’d truly miss them and maybe even all of my students from the summer, even the troublesome ones who didn’t listen or who I thought hated me. Maybe they didn’t hate me afterall, I thought. I certainly never hated them.
“You are the best tutor ever,” said Mario. Mario was always quiet but had the best English in class and had been coming to camp all eight years.
“Yes,” said Elisa, “you are very special tutor”.
The next morning my host dad drove me to the Turin train station where I would take a 6 hour train ride to Trieste and then continue on with my travels solo. Before my train was scheduled to depart, he told me “In bocca al lupo”, which is an Italian proverb that literally translates to ‘In the mouth of the wolf’ and roughly translates to ‘good luck’. Luck, I certainly needed.
Almost Heaven
A night in Trieste, a month and six busses in Croatia and Montenegro, a plane and a train in Scotland, a plane and a bus in Ireland, and finally one more plane ride before I was once again sitting passenger side in my dad’s black Nissan driving down I-95 on the way home from the Philadelphia airport. It was October 20th. The all so familiar yet foreign exit for West Grove appeared and eventually highways were replaced by back roads and back roads were replaced by country roads. One particular country road right before my development was all too sentimental for me.
As we made the turn down Chesterville Road I shuffled my music to the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” that I had become all too familiar with over the summer. My heart ached for Italy, yet it also ached for this place that I’ve called home forever. These country roads would take me to my home in Pennsylvania; they’d take Tatiana home to Toronto, Andrew to his temporary home in Spain, countless host families and friends to their own homes in Italy, and one particular fortune telling John Denver fan home to a tiny village in the Italian Alps. They were all thousands of miles away and all at some type of place that they’d call home.
When I finally got back, I began unpacking the backpack that had been my entire life for the past four and a half months. At the bottom of a small compartment I found about 20 tiny lego pieces stowed away. It would take me a few months of holding onto the disassembled baggie of legos to find someone to put the little red and blue car from Alessio back together for me.
Although the car is small, it amazes me that this tiny vehicle has traveled so many country roads in so many different countries. Now and then I still skate it across a table, reminiscing about the time that I spent teaching in Italy. I’ll never consider myself a good teacher, but I truly did love it. I found home down those Italian country roads. There were the people that made home feel close when I needed home most, places that I never wanted to leave, and experiences that I wished more than anything I could put in my backpack and take to Pennsylvania with me. When I need to remember these moments I shuffle my music to that song and let it take me home.
“Country roads, take me home,
to the place I belong…”
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