Looking Back through New Eyes

Now that I'm back, safely, to the U.S. and the hum of my fairly uneventful life here, I think it's much easier to get a clearer focus on the depth and breadth of last semester in Florence. While, somewhat to my dismay, what clouds my thoughts of the experience as a whole is the program, my wonderful American villamates and friends, and the good times, travels, and well...shopping that we did--fitting into the stereotypical and not so benificent 'American' role--instead of like a few of my fellow SEEers whose experiences seemed much more into the everyday grit and grim of the world and the world's vast inequities.

I feel that my experience was so giddy, for lack of a better word, because it was perhaps shallower than it could or should have been. I mean, I did volunteer at two local schools where I interacted with Italian elementary and high school students, helped them with the English language and they taught me more about Italian, and I met Italians instead of the same 30 or so Americans with whom I lived and learned with, but my experience was pretty much just that--I didn't get to help clear away or attempt to change global inequality, poverty, hunger, or other horrible yet real issues facing millions of our fellow global citizens--I went into middle class schools in a relatively middle class area of a wealthy European country. While I dearly value those times and I did learn a great deal about Italian culture, my own 'culture', and about human nature in general, I feel that I did little to actually impact lives. Sure, the kids were happy to see me and always seemed very interested in what I had to say or to learn about the US, but I had little opportunity to work with them one on one or get to know them as individuals. I guess it is unrealistic to expect every service experience to be one in which you have the chance to make a huge impact--to change, to solve problems, but after thinking about my semester and reading what others have done, I feel that I could have done more--perhaps given the prosrate homeless people throughout the high end streets of Florence a few coins or maybe a smile.

I guess the main factor from my English teaching experiences was to see that, as I had assumed to an extent previously, kids are all really the same-innocent, eager to learn and be the best, and thirsty for knowledge, as well as welcoming of others--whether or not they grow up on one side of an ocean or another. Seeing Valentina and Junior smile when they got something right or I encouraged them to speak up, knowing their initial inclinations were right or having a bilingual discusion with high schoolers about politics in Italy and the US or family life in both places, made me see more of the similarities than the differences in their culture and ours--we all basically want the same things, even if national views on politics or the world are different. One major difference, which also has translated into my tendency now to view America and Americans as ungrateful and ignorant as well as self-involved as a whole, was the incredible awareness beyond themselves, their particular situtations and locality of the teens of Sesto Fiorentino. There seemed to be among that class and in Italy and Europe as a whole a greater desire to look out for the common good, to attempt to balance out the inequalites in even small ways, that the U.S. just doesn't seem to have as a top priority, which is disheartening.

As Lissett mentioned in her reflections and I also feel, there is a huge divide in priviledge across the world, us Americans being always on the upper side of that, yet still wanting wanting wanting--I'm just as guilty as the next guy of that, although I hope that I start making more concious decisions about what I take take take, after all, it's not the shiny new shoes I got in Italy but the lessons I learned and the memories that I have and the pictures that are what I will remember as Italy and Europe, my often awkward times in the public schools of Sesto being a major part of those.

-Andrea Rush, December 2006