Reliving the Taste of Italy 

 

The flavor of Italy still remains on the tongue of UCI study-abroad

advisor Crystal Fairbanks. In 2007 she was a 3rd year student at

UCI when she chose to spend her spring quarter in Siena, Italy.

Rather than travel to an English-speaking country she sought the

challenge of adapting to a new culture and foreign language. “I just

wanted to put myself in a completely %100 new environment.”

 

Siena was the perfect environment for Chrystal. A small city with

a population of just over 50,000, Siena rests in the Tuscany region

of Central Italy (for perspective, Rome currently has roughly two

million residents). The small town provided Chrystal a strong sense

of community. “I could see the same faces on my morning walk everyday.” With historically enriching architecture back-dropping her environment, she appreciate how she could “walk the town in a day.”

 

Over here in the states we feel that we have a decent conception of the Italian cuisine, however as Chrystal learned, much of the food there is regional and seasonal. “They don’t really import food, so depending on the time of year you’ll eat different foods.” Not everyone enjoys daily the saucy dishes we’ve learned to know and love as Italian. “In the Tuscany region, they mainly use olive oil and garlic in their pasta dishes. It’s SO good.” She said that “when you go down towards Sicily, that’s when you start seeing more sauces.”

 

The culture shock of the new environment excited Chrystal and instantly gave her the realization this experience was going to force her to adapt. “The first month I was like, ‘What did I get myself into?’”

 

She admits the language barrier was a definite hurdle in the beginning of her experience. Buying groceries and interacting with the locals was comparable to a mime attempting to give directions. “I felt like a five year old on the inside.”

 

Luckily, she elected the home-stay option for her UC-organized housing accommodation, which meant she lived with actual Italians that helped her get used to the language and social norms. Her host family consisted of a warm and welcoming aging couple. Though they lived by themselves, their children and grandchildren would frequently visit. She was grateful for the family immersion, and it gave her the opportunity to “see how the general Italian family lives.” Though the grandkids would try to scare her upon their visiting, she loved how she felt like part of the family.

 

We often don’t consider the similarities that bind our humanity together. It is easy to consider differences between cultures, yet as Chrystal discovered, going abroad “changes that view of ‘the other.’” Experiencing other cultures allows us to open up our perspectives and break down the divisions in our world. However sometimes some differences are just too dramatic to get over – Chrystal still can’t get over why “the clothes washer was in the kitchen.”