Jamie's trip to Genoa

In January of 2012, my parents and I left for Genoa, Italy.  When my parents initially told me about it, I was hesitant because it meant I would have to leave all my friends and family in Philly and wouldn’t see them for 6 months.   The departure day came and we flew to Milan.  When we landed there was a large taxi waiting to take us to our apartment building in Genoa.   We lugged our suitcases into the tiny elevator and then into our apartment.  It was a nice little apartment and after a while, I was able to get used to it, but at first it was pretty hard.  Every night for maybe a month I had trouble sleeping.  I would start thinking about Philly and all my friends and I would start to cry. This lasted for maybe 10-15 minutes and then I would try to stop.  I missed my friends so much  

A few days after we arrived when we had recovered from jetlag, my mom told me about a school called ISG (International School of Genoa).  I was to start attending the following week.  My mind started racing.  I thought, “What if no one speaks English there?” and “What if no one likes me?” My parents went with me to take the bus over to the school.  We didn’t have a car and they needed to show me the bus route.  They made sure that the right people knew that I was there.  We all got a tour of the building and then they hugged me and said,

.“Have great first day at school” they left me with the school secratery.  “This is Noah Rossi,” she said indicating a young boy.  “You will be following Noah today.  You and he are in the same classes.”

Noah led me through a courtyard , and to our first-period class, which was English.

I walked into the classroom with Noah.  At first, I was anxious but then I noticed that everyone was smiling at me.  I smiled back and soon they were bombarding me with questions, like “Do you celebrate Christmas in America?”,”Do you have McDonalds in America?” and other typical questions that we ask people of different nationalities.  The teacher interupted.  Her name was Ms. Ryder and she was very tall and wore high heels to make herself even taller.  She had amazing posture.  She got up from her desk and asked if I would share a little about myself.  I was flattered, and got up in front of the class and told them a little bit about my family and life in the States.  

After a couple of hours it was time for lunch.  I got in line and grabbed a tray.  After a few minutes it was my turn at the front of the line and I said

“Hi can I have some pasta a piece of bread and some pear juice?’  The lunch lady looked very disappointed she said,

“No you must have lasagna first before anything else.  It felt weird to me that she was telling me what I could and could not eat but I went with it anyway even though I don’t like lasagna.

I remember one day in particular that was pretty intense for me.  It started out as a normal day.  I woke up, got dressed, poured myself some milk and cocoa puffs into a bowl, and watched an episode of the animated Mr. Bean series.  Then I got my backpack ready for school and started walking down the long hill that leads from our apartment building with my dad.  We waited at the nearest bus stop.  What normally happened is that my dad and I would board the bus together, get off at the stop close to my school and play some 1 on 1 soccer before school.  Then he would say goodbye to me from there.  That did not happen on this day.  When the bus pulled up to the bus stop I realized that it was extremely crowded.  I got on but my dad did not.  I was terrified because I did not have the route memorized.  At the time my Italian wasn’t very solid so it was hard to explain to people what had happened.  My dad was running after the bus as fast as he could, and he yelled to me,  “Get off at the next stop!”  So I tried, but it was pretty difficult to get out of the bus since there were so many people.   I managed to get off the bus but my dad was still far away.  The bus stops are far apart in Genoa.  I just looked around and it looked foreign to me. I did not see my dad and I feared I was going to be late for school.  There were two  Italian girls with me at the bus stop and they seemed concerned.  They asked me what was wrong, in Italian, and I responded in English.   I said, “My dad didn’t get on the bus with me and I don’t know how to get to school”.  The girls didn’t understand what I said.  It seemed to make them nervous which did not help me at all.  After a couple of minutes, I saw my dad running to where I was.  When he reached me, we hugged and talked about what we should do next.  We agreed that we should wait for the next bus.  Luckily it was not nearly as crowded as the first one so we could both fit on board.  We got off at my school and I was on time!  I was so happy.  After that day I had a much more positive view of Italy.

Not long after the my bus adventure my grandfather came to visit.  We took a short trip with him to a park called Nervi.  First we headed to the”passeggiata” which is a sidewalk that is really close to the sea.  We got to the park gates.   Unlike most of Genoa, the park was very green and had lots of palm trees that were all pretty close together.  We saw lots of people walking their dogs, jogging, hanging out with their kids at the playground, and sitting around on the grass.  My dad and I had brought our soccer ball when all of a sudden I had an idea.

I said “What if we played soccer with the goal being the space between those trees there?!”  My dad really liked the idea so we got out the ball and started kicking around.  We played for close to an hour and I got really sweaty.  It was one of the first times when I felt really good about being in Italy, because I got to do something that I enjoyed, with people that meant a lot to me, in an awesome place.  

My experience in Italy in 2012 was mixed.  There were some things that happened that were frustrating, but they did not overpower all the wonderful things that happened. Over time, I totally forgot about the bad things.  I can think of many more examples of great things that happened, rather than bad.  I look forward to going to Italy again in 2018.