These were the wise words that Dean Hall used to open our Listening Summit last weekend. The idea of the Listening Summit is to bring us together with Italian university students and listen to each other to gain a better understanding of one another. We talked about domestic politics, foreign policy, culture and the economy. Somewhere in the midst of all this academic talk, though, we got to know one another and we actually became friends. So, in addition to being able to tell you what’s wrong with the Euro and the struggles involved in European integration, I can tell you about my new friends. The first girl I got to know was named Maria.
Maria was born into a family of eight children and now has 11 siblings. There are six boys and six girls. Together, the family lived in Curtea de Argeş, Romania. If you ask Maria, she’ll tell you she doesn’t talk to her older siblings much. “They’re old-fashioned,” she explains. Maria, on the other hand, is a progressive young woman who has had big dreams from a young age. She was the first in her family to attend college—in fact, this decision was the reason she moved out of her childhood home at the age of 14. To support herself, she sold jewelry made out of curls of paper. She also taught her younger sister to make the jewelry so that she, too, could leave home and get an education. Maria wears a paper butterfly of bright swirls on the outside of her denim jacket as an example of her and her sister’s artwork. Maria is now in graduate school in Florence, and she told me her most sincere hope is to go back to Romania and open a retirement home.
In addition to the educational aspects, we had a lot of fun. For that weekend, we lived, ate, talked and learned to ballroom dance with this group of eleven students. Where did all of this take place, you ask? In a castle in the rolling hills of Tuscany. Where I had my own room. With a boulder for a wall. Ha!
Since then, we’ve had a Halloween party (where we got to see our Italian friends again) to celebrate the upcoming holiday. Now, we’re getting ready to set out to all different corners of Europe and beyond for our long weekend. I will be heading to London and I have to admit I’m pretty excited about being able to speak English.