After our morning ritual coffee (il cafe) with Stefania and her friends (I am the only one who needs to drink the espresso with milk) I headed to le Teatro Greco- the largest amphitheater in Greek history located right in Siracusa.

I am not really one for museums, more of a huh.. that’s a cool painting, now where’s the pizza? But this amphitheater was truly stunning- definitely a site all should see when in Sicily during my language homestay in Italy.

I didn’t have Euros when I was dropped off and I was scared that there wasn’t a bank nearby. An old man who worked for the theater showed me where the bank was I was extremely cautious about this because I felt like at any point he could try to steal from me- but he was also extremely old, so I figured even if he tried I could take him out. (I’m already planning on beating up an old guy in Italia and it is only Day 3!)

He ended up working the lights for the play that happens each year at the Teatro Grecco and he eventually ended up helping me shoot some stuff for my videos for Greenheart Travel and telling me way more about the Teatro than I would have ever known. I tried to take out my tripod and he said NO! Not allowed! And realized, there was no way I would have been able to shoot anything without him.

Read more about Ashley’s day trip to le Teatro Greco and watch her video tour!

The morning after I found out about the news of Grandma Shirley I decided that I would catch up on all of my work when everyone was at school instead of going out filming. When I woke up the power to the whole house was out. I thought, huh, that’s funny God, what do you want me to do? Why did this have to happen the day I decided to stay home? As I came into the house I heard,

“Ashley!! Ashley!! Venez qui venez qui!!

Zia Pena, the 92 year-old aunt had fallen from her bed and hit her head and no one was home to help her.

This has never happened before.

I received a call the night before that my grandmother had passed away and I was in complete tears, and now I wake up to the frail auntie on the floor hurt. I was a nervous wreck. I thought, no I can’t take another tragedy.

Luckily after about 30 minutes I got Zia Pena back in bed with a cold compress. I sat there frozen, as if it was so obvious why I was home that day, of all days. I felt like God was trying to tell me something, like I had a second chance to learn from a grandma-like figure. I sat there and read “Blue Like Jazz” to her, an intriguing book on Christianity and spirituality.

I hear you God. Thanks for the second chance.

From day one I have taken to Zia Pena. She intrigues me so much with her sassy attitude that comprises all of her little 92 year-old body. For my first four days every time I tried to talk to her she would say, “No capito,” and brush me off. Stefania speaks English very well and understands me most of the time, the children somewhat understand me and the father speaks French, which is helpful. So while I’m speaking French to the father he tells me that Zia Pena speaks French.

This whole time she was watching me speak French, choosing not to speak French and just saying “no capito” to everything I said! HAHA! I started cracking up. She was a riot.

I shouted, “Zia Pena!! Parlate Franchese?!” She quietly replied… “si…” And from that day on she’s been my little bambino.

If you want to learn how to live a long life, just take after Zia Pena. But not just a long life, a full life. Every day she wakes up praying to Jesus with her Italian prayer programs and her saint cards, she does the laundry, makes coffee, stays up late and helps the kids with their home and drinks red wine at EVERY meal. It’s been an ongoing joke that me and Zia Pena are the only ones getting drunk at the dinner table.

And she’s fierce in the kitchen. You don’t want to mess with her when she’s got a pair of scissors and fish in her hands!

The day I found out she could speak French all barriers were broken. I love how she goes from crying over Mateo’s broken nose and praying to the saints to getting mad easily with her little spunky Italian lady attitude- showing us who’s boss.

I think she’s lived so long because she was a constant learner of life and an investor into the lives of others. She taught young children for decades and poured everything else into her family. She is constantly moving, onto her next project, and constantly praying. It’s a true gem to observe.

I told her that I am going to write her a love letter, entitled, “Mia Adorata” in Italian if she writes me one in French/English. She said she would, and I’m counting on it. She was sick last week, but this week, I’ll let you know if I get that letter.

Gratzi Zia Pena, mia adorata.

Grandma Shirley taught me that it doesn’t matter what is going on in your life, if you are a writer, then write. And Zia Pena teaches me that it doesn’t matter how old you are to do something and to start something. Goes to show you that respect is definitely deserved among the baby boomer generation, who didn’t have computers or iphones and still ruled the world.

Give it a second thought before you judge your grandparents, you might learn a lesson or two that you didn’t expect.

xoxo

Ashley

My ultimate struggle between balance has nothing to do with Italy or it’s people- it’s the American struggle that haunts all of us, and that Liz Gilbert did touch on in the film Eat Pray Love. Us Americans always feel like we have to be doing something in order to feel complete. Why can’t we feel complete and relax?! Why is this something that doesn’t come second nature to us, but comes so naturally to Italians?

It is going to be one of my ultimate goals to unlock this Italian mystery. “Balance,” by figuring out what habits consummate this concept and how to become more European in this sense.

In the meantime, pizza with green peas and eggs is my comfort.

Read more about Ashley’s experience living in Sicily during her Language Homestay in Italy program…

 “It’s not the places you’ll remember, it’s that conversations you had at the cousin’s girlfriend’s dad’s pub.”

Last night I had a choice. I could go have dinner with another family or I could take a road trip to Taormina with my friend, Anthony and some of his friends. I have been wanting to go to Taormina and between the two busses it would take to get there to the idea of traveling solo and they said we could reschedule the dinner so I decided that it would be way more fun to go with a group, especially one I already knew.

On the phone, I finally answered Anthony, “When in Roma!” Okay, so we weren’t in Rome, we were in Taormina, which by the way is a beautiful little Harry Potter town at night. But it was still way better going in a group than solo.

It’s the whole concept of, is life about the experience or the people? To me, I think people make an experience.

This has come up a lot in my life, with one of my friends in particular who would always say, “Wow, that’s such a great experience,” or “okay, let’s do it, it’s an experience,” and I started to feel that he only wanted to go on adventures with me because I would, and because it was “an experience,” whereas to me it was more important to become closer to my friends and doing cool things was just another way of connecting with them.

With that being said, Taormina was awesome because of the group I was with. We started with what was deemed the “best cannoli’s in the world,” to going somewhere for our “before dinner,” where we had coffee and hot chocolate and ended up on some random Reality TV Show for an island off the coast of Sicily, to it now being “dinner time” – aka 9pm where we went to a fine-dining restaurant to have our-priced chicken salads to satisfy our need for something other than pasta and cheese.

(Pasta and cheese by the way, is always a good idea.)

We realized that our international bunch- Italians, Australian, American and Thailander all could speak English more than we even knew and we started having more in-depth conversations past the whole- I love ricotta and what are Italian boys really like? To our philosophy on the strategic maneuvers guys use to pursue girls and how Facebook is a more powerful drug than crack or cocaine to the speed in which our physical and mental bodies move on Earth causes us to always be physically living in the past.

Although we all came from different parts of the world, with different backgrounds and different concepts of right and wrong, we all agreed on some general enlightening principles that I thought I would share….

3 Concepts Agreed by People from 4 Different Countries.

1. Facebook Messes with a Realistic Sense of Time and Space

We all decided that Facebook truly messes with real time and creates a false reality that becomes an addictive pursuit if not used properly (which most people don’t.)

“The problem with Facebook is that you always want to be in more than one place at the same time,” Anthony said. I find this entirely true. One minute you wish you were backpacking in the Phillipines with your best friend, the next minute you are questioning whether you should be getting married and having kids because that’s what the kids from college are doing.

With wanting to get so many “likes” and checking their phones before, during and after they are doing something- it has become a DRUG. Traveling without Facebook has been the best thing ever, but after 10 days I started to realize that my new friends could only communicate with me through Facebook and they now wanted to see their own photos, so it became apparent to me that

Facebook is not evil, and when used for its original intention, can bring you closer to people. The problem is that instead of using it to become closer to people, we are using it to build some false “audience” almost like a promotional campaign that makes us “feel” closer to vast amounts of people, brings us no closer to the people closer to us and in turn makes us feel no more social than we were.

We examined a few different people and decided the most unhappy people on Facebook are the ones that are constantly posting things on Facebook.

However, this doesn’t mean that those who don’t post things on Facebook aren’t addicted to Facebook. I have one friend that never posts anything at all, but she is constantly checking it to see what her friends are doing. So don’t think you are flying high by never posting anything- but just don’t let it control you as a whole.

It still happened, even if you didn’t put it on Facebook. And it still happened even if you only got “3 Likes” for it.

Without having a reliable phone here, Facebook has been our way of making plans, or giving each other photos that we would otherwise not have seen. It is also a way to share this blog of the insights.

3. A Lesson from the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama XIV

“Man surprised me most about humanity.Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

We are constantly worrying about the future so we are never actually living in the present and once we get to the “future” we are worrying about the past and how we were just not living in the present- essentially we are in a constant state of worry and never actually achieving anything and never actually happy.

3. A Picture is Not Worth a Thousand Words Anymore…but it can be.

I love photos, anyone will know that. I constantly have my camera on me, taking photos and video, but I was thinking about something crucial.

We are capturing photos to capture a moment in time, a memory, not to create a memory. I saw a friend write the other day that he is sick of “creating memories” from his photos. If you are setting something up to look like something else that never actually happened, then that memory essentially doesn’t exist, just the memory of you setting it up.

If something is so staged and falsified, I wonder, if a picture is worth a thousand words, than what do those words actually say?

I love photos and when used properly, I think can provide a great memory and create a picture for others as well, again, it’s all about the way we use technology. Take photos for you and for the people who are with you. Take them to remember things. Take them to capture REAL moments. Take them to paint a full picture. 

To be able all communicate was a gift and a true example of how language is powerful in understanding others and the world around us. This is another reason why teaching English right now is so important to why I am in Italy.

When we got back to Siracusa, we ended the night at a place in Ortigia and prancing around the streets singing “Wrecking Ball” – which I’ve officially deemed as the song of the trip.

Do I remember the name of the streets in Toarmina or where we got the best cannolis in the world? No, but I do remember our theories from the Dahli Lama and how much Mona loves her dolce, and that is good enough of a memory for me.

xoxo

Last night I had an amazing Italian New Year, joining the Gissara Famiglia with their other friends and family similar to Christmas dinner with a night beginning at 8pm and going into the wee hours of the morning.

It was nice to see how much thought goes into creating a great celebration of the New Year, it see that it’s not all about drinking and having an excuse to make bad decisions and watch the ball drop, but to really take in your loved ones around you and appreciate the good tidings of the year. It was also nice to see that no one was on Instagram or attached to their phones (only when making plans) and just eating, drinking, playing songs on the guitar, singing dancing and living happily.

When the countdown began everyone started hugging and doing the whole European cheek kisses to everyone, which is still an amazing foreign concept to me.

The cheek kisses itself relinquish this awkward barrier of space and distance we keep from people. It’s like, hey I just met you, come into my personal space, you are invited and welcome (also reflecting the warm culture).

Afterwards, Mario, one of the older gentlemen brought out his guitar and we were singing Italian songs and older American songs from The Beatles and Elvis.

Everything in my life is starting to make sense.

It is such a reflection to see all of the older men singing, “I did it my way,” by Elvis Presley around a dinner table with food and alcohol, laughing hysterically because it clearly replicates the Bornancin brothers in my famiglia. My dad, David, Tony, Gary and Denny are the loudest bunch in town and it’s so amazing to see how so much of how I grew up and just traditions and concepts have such a direct line to the Sicician world.

Around 12:30am-1am the younger twenty-somethings headed out to this hotel where they were hosting a disco- New Year’s celebration. You had to pay $25 Euros and have tickets in advance which I did not plan for, but was extremely fortunate that the family I am staying with ended up knowing the owners made some special exceptions. My Italian friends were joking that I now not only stood out as the American, but perhaps the “famous American” who could get into clubs. (It also didn’t help that I was the ONLY one not wearing black- rocking my bright red dress, I figured, red for the New Year?)

The place was an open bar, to which was a SHOCK to me. An open bar to Americans would just be a crazy mess, luckily Europeans are much more mature about their alcoholic intake, at least at the beginning of the night

We started drinking, dancing and I met more Italians and was introduced to probably the only other fluent English speaker in the place, an Australian named Anthony who was a cousin of one of the friends’ friends I was with. (Everyone’s starting to mesh together in my brain.) It was so refreshing to be able to have in-depth conversations with him about our experiences abroad quite comical to see how we were both observing the culture as the sole outsiders until that moment.

Everyone kept coming up to us asking if we were “okay” which is quite common here I’ve noticed and we laughed how up-front everyone is, with his cousin saying, “Do you like this girl? Do you like him? He’s beautiful, yes?” haha, to which was fun to see both of our foreign responses.

In that whole process Anthony brought up a very good point. Europeans are what Australians (coming from an Australian) and Americans are not – HONEST.

They are straight up with their emotions. They leave nothing off the table. If they like someone, they make it known to everyone and then pursue immediately. If they have a problem with you, they tell you right away instead of tip-toeing around hiding their feelings. If you don’t like something like their cooking or something, it’s okay. By just saying, oh, I prefer this over that, opens up a whole window of- OF COURSE, no worries.

A good term for this in English I would say – BALLSY. In Italian, I would say, “Non preoccupanti” – don’t worry about it.

An Italian New Year’s Resolution

As most are reflecting on the 2013 at this point and their goals for 2014, I’ve come to realize a huge lesson that I want to take with me in the new year.

Italians have taught me that life is an adventure and that you can truly choose to live it however you please. It really doesn’t matter what is the “typical” way of doing things, what American’s deem as acceptable or unacceptable. If you want to go to Asia, go to Asia. If you want to fall in love, fall in love. If you want to become a football player, become a football player.

They are ballsy and fearless and I just love it and want to live my life like that.

I’ve also realized that I am starting to become the person I’ve always wanted to become- starting to form habits I’ve always talked about and never actually did, starting to truly take everything and everyone in and live intentionally.

I’ve realized that not one thing is more important in your life than another. To focus your whole life on your career and all of your days, you are leaving no room for family, enjoyment and the mysterious of God to let loose into your heart.

The one lesson that I want to take with me into the New Year and encourage you to reflect on is that

  You can’t create the future without living in the present.

And life is too short to not be ballsy.

Last night I expressed that Americans are always wanting answers and everything explained to them before making the next step. They are always asking why. While Europeans on the other hand are always asking, “Why not?”

Let’s make this year about the “Why not?”

Salute from across the globe and a Happy New Year to you all, make it one worth remembering, but let’s not think too much about our decisions that we don’t actually do them.

Xoxo

Sunday was my first official day in Italy and when I woke up from my apartment I was scared to go into the house.

This would be my first morning with my new Italian family and I was trying to stall it as much as possible. I took a nice long hot shower, put on my new big sweater, straightened my hair and headed inside. I thought the whole family would be eating breakfast together, but au contraire, it was just like my family- Steffie and Alicia were practicing her homework and the men were off betting about soccer games.

Steffie brought me to the kitchen to have some biscottos with homemade honey, burra (butter) and marmalade (jam) and she goes,

“Would you like coffee in your milk?” Okay…

Boils milk and grinds coffee beans to heat in this special device on the stove, then pours the coffee into the milk in a little cup.

Best cup of coffee I’ve ever had!

Later we had a huge lunch with the whole family- We started with this delicious mozzarella, olive oil and pepper and fresh bread from the Grandpa’s cook- then some ravioli with ricotta inside and pomodora sauce.

Read more about her first day in her new host home and the secret to eating Italian meals, on Ashley’s blog…

After 27 hours of traveling, 3 airplanes, a 7 hour layover in Berlin, a “cancelled” reservation for my ticket from Berlin to Catania, Italy because LAX couldn’t confirm the flight, sleeping on a bench in the airport with people laughing and speaking German at me, meeting Italians on my plane and exchanging information, I finally arrived to the Catania Airport in Sicily.

I was terrified to come out of baggage claim and meet everyone waiting for me, but we all have to face our fears at some point- mine particularly and to come RIGHT THEN.

It was the father, Dino who found me first “Ashley?!” I said, are you the Vinci Family? Si, si!!

And here’s where life in Italian begins.

Read why Ashley chose pizza over sleep on her first night in Sicily… 

Ashley Bornancin is our new Language Homestay scholarship winner headed to Italy and she will be blogging about her program while living abroad. Here is an excerpt from her most recent post highlighting her top 7 things she is excited about as she heads off on her adventure.

I run into so many people who say, “Oh my gosh, I’m so jealous. I’ve always wanted to go to Europe.”

Well, why don’t you?!  I’ve done so much research and there are simply too many ways to get to Europe that there is no reason to ever think this isn’t possible, but you do have to make it a priority, and have to fit it into your life.

I’ve never done anything like this and I am nervous and scared at the same time, but mostly excited at this point.

 

 Read Ashley’s blog to find out what she’s most excited for!