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Dear Community ♡ I’m sitting in the dark at my dining table, drinking cacao, blasting music and watching it get light out. I’m back from 2 weeks in Italia. Jet lag arriving there was RUFF, but coming home has been smooth sailing into being a well slept early morning person for the moment. There were many layers to my experience in Italia…I was traveling with my mom, it was my first time ever in Europe. For those of you who have been there, for reference, we were in Roma, Firenze & Venezia. We got covid in Venice and spent days under our respective covers, intermittently emerging and sticking our heads into each others rooms trying to caretake each other, which was actually pretty cute. Both of us so sick but really available to offer our gifts of nurturance to one another… Writing about my life in this way, to you, evokes a constant “what do I choose to share about?” as I navigate my life. So many angles I could take… I think I will just jump around and share some random/unrelated things that keep showing up when I ask that question. So let’s go back to the beginning of the trip- I’m at LAX, boarding the flight on an Italian airline, which is primarily populated by Italians both as passengers and staff. and suddenly…surrounded by the sound of Italian all around me…I am overcome with an ancient feeling of SHYNESS. It came on fast and strong. I of course have my insecurities, le duh, but this particular flavor of shyness was something I haven’t felt in a loooooooooong time. Like if I was asked a question, I was responding in a timid voice…there was some sort of retreating/drawing inward feeling. So I sat down in my seat and thought to myself, in robust english in my head… WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!?!? That’s when I realized that it had been 18 years since I was in a country where I don’t speak the language. and then I got to reflect on how intertwined the relationship between my confidence and verbal acuity is. 18 years ago I went to Thailand for 3 months, and the following year went to Costa Rica for 6 months. The contrast in my experiences was headlined by the fact that I can speak Spanish, and at the time I spoke it pretty well. It was there and then that I decided that I preferred to travel to places where I can speak the language so that I can connect with the local people. In Thailand I was a tourist PERIOD, in Costa Rica I was able to really immerse in the community, form friendships, have banter, all of which delight me so. By no means have I navigated these past years thinking I only want to go to english or spanish speaking places, but that’s how my life has turned out. and this trip to Italy gave me an opportunity to experience myself out in the world without my beloved communication skills to perhaps overidentify with ;) Throughout the trip I worked on speaking with more confidence with the very few Italian phrases I learned. Of course the strong greetings, but I also made a practice of using a robust and clear voice to declare my “NON PARLO ITALIANO” when they would try to speak to me further in their native tongue. I’m curious if any of you have had an interesting internal experience when traveling in places where you don’t speak the language? If so, I’d love to hear from you! I’m still processing my own experience.
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