I’ve been going to the same fruit vendor right outside my
apartment for the past month, and today I met Farrar, a Pakistani-immigrant who
happens to be a devout Christian with a seminary degree and MBA. He speaks solid English and moved to Italy less than a
year ago to find a better means to provide for his family back in his homeland.
His idea of “providing” was not working 7:30am to 11pm every day and making
the bare minimum to “barely be able to survive.”
The point of this blog post isn’t to lament Farrar’s
situation (or to discuss his rather handsome son), but rather to comment on a
question he asked me— you study at
Brown?! What are you doing here?
To be quite honest, I don’t know. There is no doubt that the
caliber of Brown far exceeds that of La Universita’ di Bologna, so I can’t say
that I’m here for the academics. It isn’t because I enjoy listening to
professors lecture for two straight hours (18 hours a week) in a language that
I am still trying to grasp, and it definitely isn’t because I enjoy eating more
bread, meat, and dairy than I know what to do with. It definitely isn’t because I love that most food places close at
11pm, that all shops close on Sundays, or that drying machines don’t exist.
Then why?
Well, I want to perfect my Italian mostly because it's a wonderful tool to have when studying the development of Christianity in the first couple of centuries (go ahead and judge me). Aside from that, I really don't know. The only thing that Farrar and I could come up with and
agree upon is that Italy is beautiful and full of so much history. It is more than wonderful to visit, but to live? Italians live a slow and relaxed lifestyle,
and while I have come to enjoy it this past month, I’m not sure that I could
ever live here permanently. Contrary to how lazy I may come off to some people, I consider myself a pretty active and busy person (but of course that's very relative). So...where does this live me?
I suppose I'm here because I want to perfect my Italian and take advantage of all of the traveling possibilities. Those are probably not the best of reasons, but they suffice. I didn't have to take an entire semester away from Brown, but I'm (currently) glad that I did. It's a different lifestyle, one that I've learned to embrace and appreciate—even if it makes me miss home. A LOT.
