Hello L'Aquila
The State of Things
Well, I’ve made it abroad. And I’ve survived a full week of it. I hesitate to say that I’ve “thrived” yet, but I’m more than just getting by. I think I’m still in a state of jetlag, but I’m starting to get familiar with things around this provincial town of L’Aquila.
L’Aquila is the capital of the Abruzzo region of Italy. It’s about 2 hours by bus from Rome, at least, that’s how I describe it. It’s in a region that is more mountainous than I’ve ever experienced before, and the mountain terrain has sparked awe in me as I continue to familiarize myself with the town. I’ve embedded a Google Maps link below.
I’m not an expert on all things Aquilan; however, I have had a few experiences, including communicating with locals and my landlords/hosts, grocery shopping, navigating the bus system, and just walking around, that have helped me learn, hands-on.
Some Things I’ve Learned
Italian or Google Translate
When I visited Berlin, I didn’t have many problems communicating. Many people spoke English, and when they didn’t, I either had the help of my partner, or I could utilize the bit of German I learned from Duolingo to get basic needs met. I generally was not stressed about speaking, unless I was speaking German to his family, in which case of course I had to be a little self-conscious.
When I got to the Rome Airport, I quickly realized things were different. As it turns out, 1 month of Duolingo is NOT enough time to use Italian to get around. As of then, my vocabulary was pretty much limited to “scusi” and “ciao, dov’è il bagno” and “un cappuccino, per favore”. While I’d like to think that my Italian has evolved a bit since then, I certainly cannot understand most sentences spoken to me.
While travelling, I was planning my route to get from the bus stop in L’Aquila to my accommodations (which, as generous as the host Enrico was, he picked me up directly). But the nights before travelling, I started to feel slight dread when I learned that I would need to call a taxi to pick me up. I discovered that ride sharing services were actually banned in Italy to protect the taxi drivers, so no Uber, no Lyft.1 And if someone asked me a question in Italian, I knew I would panic. I’ve rehearsed “Io non parlo italiano” plenty of times, but you’ve got to navigate around it.
Google Translate has been a necessary component of day-to-day life now. The live transcription feature is clunky, but I can get by. When talking to the host or when sending messages, I’ve had it at the ready. What I’ve noticed though, is it doesn’t stick automatically. I’m trying to get into the habit of writing down phrases I’ve learned this way, but it’s a discipline. I never realized what total immersion was like, and it honestly caught me off guard. And even with a translation tool, every time I go up to someone in the store holding up my phone, I feel a pang of guilt, or some emotion like it, for not being able to hold a conversation. Nothing like that to motivate me to learn a language 💪
Another thing that strikes me about translation is the way it undermines human connection. Human perception is a sub-second process, and I think there’s a saying that you judge a person in the first 200ms of seeing them (Research suggests 100ms).2 It’s actually a driver in the tech world, where sub 200-millisecond response times are important in UX to maintain user engagement (This article suggests 400ms).3 When talking to people in English, I usually feel a sense of “getting in the zone”. I think there are a lot of colloquial terms for this, like “vibing with someone” or being “in sync” — which don’t get me started on a dynamics tangent — that capture the human need for tight feedback loops. And with a translator in the middle, it’s hard to have any emotional connection when everything is mediated by a few seconds of “eh… one second… let me type this in…” and fudged translations.
Spoiler for Project Hail Mary
I kind of feel like Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary talking to Rocky. They spend most of the movie using the computer to translate, but they also use a lot of gestures. I use a lot of gestures too. Life is a little like playing charades right now. You know how in the end, he’s able to listen to Rocky and respond in English, and they clearly understand each other? I hope that’s the endgame of immersion here.
I think a lot of learning has come from mirroring. If I don’t know a word, my hosts are often kind to repeat it to me a few times. It feels like one of the stages of development in a sense, like I’m a baby learning how the world works (Thanks AI for this article too).4 I just had a refresher on “buona notte” in this manner, echoing it back. I think a lot of the process is simply adapting culture into one’s own world model, and I am sure my model is changing quickly.
In any case, I’ve been getting by, and that’s what counts. Plus, io so un po’ più italiano 😋
Culture Shock
Have you ever gone on vacation, gotten back, and thought, “man, I need a vacation from that vacation!” Well I know for a fact that many of you reading this blog have told me something to that effect before. Well, living abroad is kind of like that. Except every day, you have to remember that it’s not a vacation, and in fact, you are living here.
Travelling has been a big energy tax for me for a long time. When you’re immersed in another culture and language, I think something about your brain is working in overdrive, 24/7. (Thanks to AI, I now have the official word for it: Culture Shock. Duh…)5 When I travelled to Berlin, I noticed that I was often exhausted by the end of the day, and sometimes, even the next morning too. Even when travelling between cities in the US to visit friends, my brain seemed to be computing what I needed to do, where I needed to go, what is the city’s layout, how are things different, and so on.
I’ve felt this in little ways all over the place. There’s a little sense of worry going downstairs, knowing I have to brute-force Italian when talking to the hosts. When going to the grocery store, I’m pacing the aisles a few times, not even registering all the foods and items in the aisles. When I’m walking along the roads, I’m even contemplating whether the path I’m taking is “normal”.
I think it’s teaching me a little bit of grace. For better or worse, I’m not going to be able to hide that I’m an international student. But fortunately, I don’t have a job description including “convince locals you are Italian.” It’s not the goal. And for now, it’s just fun to adapt to the novelty all around.
From my perspective, everything I’m doing preceding my classes is almost like exercise for my ego. I’ve enjoyed entertaining some concepts like “ego depletion”6 from the popular wave of “self-improvement” gurus (as much as I consider a portion of it as a grift or hustle culture), and I think this offers a reasonable lens for considering all the exploration. I’m excited for when things start getting easier, but until then, I’ll keep training my will.
US != Italy
I think there’s a lot to be said about all the things that are different between Italy and the US. I’m not even going to begin to try to enumerate them all now. That might even get a bit political 😝
There are some key items though that have struck me as I’ve begun to settle in, though. Some of them, I was familiar from travelling to Berlin, or I at least saw them coming. Some of them are likely just because I’m in the frazione of Coppito in L’Aquila, which is like a suburb of the city center.
Buses Are the Way to Go, Except on Sundays or When You Have a Car
I think most people know that America’s public transportation doesn’t measure up to Europe’s. Here in the mountainous area of Italy, that means buses (It seems like it even used to be donkeys until the 1950s; glad I’m travelling now!).7 While there are trains in L’Aquila, they aren’t the main mode of transport here, as they often were in Berlin. There’s only one train in L’Aquila, and to be honest, I’m not sure where it goes yet. To be continued in a future post. Buses are run through AMA, and so far, they’ve covered the nearby shopping centers and importantly, the university campus.
I haven’t tried to go to the city center by bus yet, but my host drove us by car, and it took around 15 minutes. By bus, it would be around 20 minutes. And that’s all fine, unless it’s Sunday. In Italy, Sunday is more or less a holiday, with stores (and buses)8 having reduced hours. Given that we’re in Italy, home of the Vatican, that didn’t come as a surprise to me in principle, but it also makes it difficult to go to the city center for breakfast with your flatmate when the buses run about once every 4 hours. It’s one thing I miss about having a car in the US—on-demand transport.
Speaking of cars, it seems as if most people here have cars to get around, including my host. A lot of the town’s infrastructure, at least in Coppito, is designed for cars, many times lacking sidewalks. Walking around hasn’t been the easiest journey, but I certainly feel adventurous taking footpaths on the side of the road. I’ve got to get my steps in somehow.
Bye Bye, Central Air Conditioning, Buzz Buzz
Title says it all. Send help, I’m burning away in here. Jokes aside, the weather has been fairly pleasant so far, and with a fan, I haven’t had troubles keeping cool. At times, it can be a little hard to sleep, but I’ve been adjusting well.
The one thing that is a new challenge is bugs though. When you leave the window open to keep cool, it turns out the creatures occupying aerospace find this to be an ideal opportunity to come to visit. I have more mosquito bites than I’ve had in years; it’s like I’m back at Boy Scout camp. I even had a live bee fly in my room (which I accidentally killed 😭; I didn’t know if it was a hornet and I’ve never felt more guilty about harming a bug). While this is user-error, and I need to get a window screen of some kind, this was a learning curve when figuring out how to stay cool.
Honestly, though, the mountain air is wonderful, especially how it changes in character throughout the day. When it’s hot, it’s only a dry heat, so 90°F here (or 30ish °C) is much more pleasant than humid Indiana. In the evenings, the air picks up a chill like fall without being cold yet. We’ll see how things change as summer becomes autumn becomes winter, but I do have a radiator in here.
L’Aquila Had a Devastating Earthquake in 2009
A little history that I learned from my hosts on the way to and from the city center: L’Aquila had major destruction from an earthquake in 2009. There are still parts of the city center that are under construction after the devastation, but I believe the impact has been reduced. Shortly following the earthquake, there was a G8 meeting, moved here in solidarity to the town’s efforts to recover.9
Prior to this conversation, I honestly didn’t know about G8. As this trip has gone on, I’m learning politics in addition to culture. In the US, I had the luxury of being a step removed from it, thanks to my upbringing and social situation. But as my flatmate, who lived in Palestine, Jordan, and Tunisia, put it, “I lived in a conflict zone. I had no choice but to follow politics.” It’s something that’s become a theme the older I get and the more places I go.
My hosts asked me if I remembered the situation, to which I could only respond that “Avevo 7 anni”, or “I was 7”. It’s still interesting to me to learn about some of these events, and while not the same situation at all, it reminds me of how 9/11 was something that I and my generation could only learn about in hindsight. It’s different to know about the situation and to learn the impact it brought to people close to the event. This is something that I’m still learning more about, and I still don’t fully understand the implications for L’Aquila. It does appear to be a defining event for the town, though.
Europe isn’t Magically Small
When I got here, I had a misguided notion that I could up and go for a random day trip whenever I felt like it, and that public transportation made all my problems disappear. Well, this is not the case. Europe is big, as it turns out.
I have travel plans to go to Zürich next week, and as my friend and unofficial travel planner said, you’ve got to plan the transportation first, then what you’re going to do. As you can see above in the lovely Google Map, taking the bus to Zürich would be about 2 FlixBus routes and 16 hours for about €120. Comparatively, my actual route is about 6 hours, and takes a bus to the airport, then a flight to Zürich at about €110. All with less than half the total travel time, and about the same price. Now, if I were backpacking and visiting multiple cities along the way over the course of several days, maybe the FlixBus would be reasonable. But that’s not the case. As I’ve learned, you have to know what you’re doing when you’re making a travel plan.
My Emotions got Jetlagged
Leaving home felt easy at first. It was all theoretical. But as the days crept up, and I started seeing people for the last time preceding my departure, it gradually started to hit me. But I want to emphasize gradually.
I’m not typically a touchy-feely person. And I’m still not. But remembering my goodbyes, face-to-face with my closest friends and my family members, inspires a new emotion in me that is a mixture of homesickness, pride, and love. I think the homesickness is a fairly obvious feeling. While FaceTime does work wonders in seeing people, I often think about the delay happening between frames, and like I mentioned with translation, there’s slight delays that get lost or chopped up, especially in poor connection. To the point of pride, it’s not so much a hubristic pride, but rather, a contentment with the relationships we’ve built together. I told my parents, “if it hurts to say goodbye, it means you’re doing something right.” I don’t know if this is an original quote, but I can say for sure that it hurts to leave, and I’m proud of the pain. Love. What a big word. I think love is better felt than written in words, but like Dr. Brand says in Interstellar, “Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.”10 I feel the love, everyone 😊
I feel like leaving didn’t actually hit me until I was settled in for a few days. And it’s still coming. When I call my friends at 4:00 PM and it’s just then 9 AM there, it becomes more clear that we’re a world apart. When I get text messages as I’m falling asleep in group chats as people get off of work, it hits me again. And when I realize that going to see everyone is a thousand dollar, 14-or-so hour journey, it really drives it home. Those reminders happen in waves. In many senses, I just feel like business as usual, especially since classes have not begun. Every new experience is a reminder that things are different though, and that takes a while to sink in.
What’s Next?
We’ll see what adventures I go on and where this blog goes. I kind of want to just use it as my public-facing journal of ideas anyways. Since I just got here, there’s a lot to do and see in Europe, but I’m also inspired by blogs like Terence Tao’s.11 Now, let’s get something straight: I’m not any Terence Tao right now, since he’s an incredibly accomplished mathematician. My blog is going to mix whatever I feel like writing about, not just math.
Maybe I’ll have some things to say after travelling to Zürich. Maybe not. Right now, I’m just keeping an open mind to whatever topics sound interesting. Also, I don’t expect to write anything this long for a while. This has taken me several hours to write so far, and given that I’ll be in graduate school, these will likely be more like mini-blog entries. But it’s better than nothing.
Hopefully, somewhere along the way, I’ll learn to take more pictures to put in this blog. I very much love to live in the moment, and unfortunately, it means my phone often lives in my pocket during the most interesting events in my life. But not always, especially since I want you all to be able to follow along with the journey.
Ciao for now everyone, and thanks for reading this far!
Critically,Thomas