Emily Bedenkop
April 3, 2013
Tucked away into a corner of Rome’s Fiumicino airport on a
recent weekday was a small encampment of exhausted students, lying across one
another and trading backrubs, hair braids, and the scraps of food they could
afford with their limited supply of remaining euros. Just 10 days before, these
same students were self-segregated by school, alternating awkwardly getting to
know one another and wandering the same airport to look at the limited
assortment of duty-free stores.
For 16 years, students from the University of Massachusetts
Amherst have traveled to Sicily each spring semester as part of a course on
travel writing and photojournalism. Harford art majors concentrating in
illustration and photography have been joining the UMass group for over a
decade. Getting to know one another and residents of the small Sicilian towns
visited are highlights of the annual trip, students said.
Though the itinerary of visits to temples, museums and
wineries in small towns from the mountains to the seaside varies from year to
year, these slight changes are balanced by how the same people have always
coordinated the trip. Their familiarity with each other and the general
experience makes the trip run smoothly.
“We started planning this trip on the plane ride home last year,”
said Hartford Art School Associate Professor Jeremiah Patterson.
Patterson, a renowned watercolor painter with work exhibited
throughout the country, is also a UMass graduate. He traveled to Yucatan as an
undergraduate with Rick Newton, who has coordinated UMass programs going to
Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and now Sicily since 1991. Newton, known for
the extra memory cards he carries for over-shooting photographers, was
nicknamed “Salty” by students amused by the number of things that bother him,
like plastic bags “ruining” scenic shots.
As photography instructor, Newton shares the UMass class
with Carol Connare, director of Development and Communications for the UMass
Library. Connare
has taught the travel-writing component for three years, and after the trip
works with the writers to create a magazine of their work and students’
photography. This magazine is in addition to each student’s final project, a
portfolio composed of short vignettes and either photography or lengthier
feature stories, depending on the class section.
In
the months before the actual trip to Sicily, the two alternated teaching
together on Sicilian history and culture, and dividing the 16-person class into
its writing and photography sections for more technical instruction.
“Rick taught me
an overwhelming amount in an extremely short period of time,” said junior
journalism and English double-major Kyle Little, who admitted he had been
worried about barely knowing how to operate his newly purchased digital camera.
Pre-trip photography classes involved learning to control depth of field, blur
or stop motion, and avoid using what Newton calls “dummy mode” – the completely
automatic setting – at all costs, said Little.
Junior journalism major Lindsay Davis is the UMass teaching
assistant this year, and decided to concentrate on photography because she was
in the writing section last year. Returning to the course and Sicily for a
second year, said Davis, gave her the opportunity to reflect on Sicily, rather
than just touring. Davis said that experiencing small towns like Castelbuono,
the residents of which invited students to join their Saint Joseph’s Day
celebration, made her realize how close-knit Sicilian communities are compared
to the large UMass campus.
Senior illustration major Michele Epstein is the teaching
assistant for Hartford, and like Davis felt drawn back to the class and the
island; “To me it kind of seems like the trip was on a separate time, kind of
like the rest of the world paused when we were there. Going a second time it
seemed to go by even quicker,” said Epstein.
Other students had reflective experiences like Davis,
returning to school with a different perspective because of their travels. “I don't feel as concerned with some of the things that used
to bug me, now they seem more minor and insignificant,” said Andy Bates, a
junior illustration major at Hartford.
Like Bates, senior
accounting major Felisha Amato said that being exposed to a different way of
life in Sicily made her less enthusiastic for upcoming academic obligations;
“Comparing my life to the lives of the Sicilians in small towns made me
question why I do the things I do and what is most important to me. I almost
wonder if living in some sort of ignorance is easier.”
For the majority of students traveling to Sicily for the
first time, the class’s balance between academics and touring made for an ideal
traveling experience. “The
opportunity for three credits and the prospect of active travel writing and
photography was intriguing,” Little said when asked what incited him to apply
for enrollment. Though the trip costs nearly three thousand dollars, said Little,
“Looking back it was worth every cent.”
During
the 10 days of the students’ trip, they traveled from the capital of Palermo in
the northwest to Taormina at the base of Mt. Etna on the northeast coast, from
which you can see the boot of Italy. Small pockets of pale yellow stucco buildings
with red-orange roof tiles and green doors compose the towns in between, nestled
into the mountainous interior of the island and along the rocky cliffs and
beaches of the coast. Balconies adorn nearly every window, providing locals
with the chance to socialize, hang laundry, and cool off in the Mediterranean
climate that yields summer temperatures well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Students seized the
chance to wear shorts and sundresses in the sunny warmth of Sicilian springtime,
drawing more confused stares than ever from natives still bundled up in wool
coats.
“The landscape and
atmosphere was so different from anything I had previously been used to that I
was like a sponge soaking everything in that I could all trip long,” said Bates.
What
is referred to as the “Sicilian Team” on the UMass course’s website transforms
the trip from a class tour, bringing life to and personalizing the traveling
experience. Rosa Rizza, the Durgan Travel Service tour guide, strikes the
perfect balance between affectionate and informative; “She quickly became a second mother
to me,” said Bates. Though a Sicilian by birth and spirit, Rizza spent her adolescence
in Connecticut. She has the perspective of someone who has lived as both an
outsider and insider, not to mention the bilingualism.
In addition to fielding the group’s questions about Italian
politics, for example, Rizza lectured on topics ranging from Greek and Roman
theaters to the mythology of Mt. Etna. The mountain is an active volcano believed
to be the home of cyclopes under which lies the forges of Hephaestus, god of
fire and metalwork.
Also key to the trip was Mario Fili, who owns the bus
company and acts as driver for the trip. Fili is remarkable for his
ever-present smile, good-natured mockery of students’ Italian pronunciations, and
wearing a suit while negotiating the bus through the narrow winding Sicilian
roads throughout the week. This year’s trip was the first to include a visit to
Fili’s hometown of Alimena, where he had requested the ceremonial decorations
of St. Joseph’s Day to remain intact for an unprecedented extra day so the
students could see them.
“The man knows what's going on and pulls a lot of strings, all
while remaining unimposing,” said Bates.
St. Joseph was known for feeding the poor, so the symbolic
offerings of bread, oranges, and pasta placed before a painting of him and the
infant Jesus in Alimena were a fitting celebration. St. Joseph’s Day doubles as
the Italian Father’s Day and a tribute to this generosity to the poor. Each
year on this day towns across Sicily have lunch together, with a few people
preparing a simple meal to be shared by whoever wants to join.
Many
students on the trip this year had never traveled outside of the United States
or North America before, making the trip to Sicily more unique and increasing
the necessity of guidance.
“When
you travel it’s not the country that has to adapt to you, you have to adapt to
the country. That’s how you become international. And be international, it’s
more fun,” said Rizza.
Partaking in an olive oil tasting with Rizza’s parents and
meeting one of Fili’s oldest friends at the farm where he makes his own ricotta
cheese helped make the tour experience more personal. Said Davis, “Sicilia is their homeland, and being with them for the ride
makes it feel like yours too.”
Because
Newton, Connare, and Patterson have been traveling to Sicily for so long
together, said Davis, going with the class feels like tagging along with a family.
They crack jokes and remind each other of Sicilian trivia on long bus rides. In
each town the teachers and Sicilian Team have favorite restaurants or sunrise observation spots that they return to each year,
and they share these locations with the students. “That's what family is, making and treasuring these traditions,”
Davis said.
This sense of family is
evident in student interactions, too; according to veterans Davis and Epstein, the
bonding that occurs throughout the trip translates back to the classroom upon
the students’ return.
“We know everyone's
personalities and mesh well together,” said Davis. Used to being together, writers
and photographers in the UMass class refused to work in separate rooms upon
returning from Sicily, despite the fact that they are working on different
final projects. UMass and Hartford students said they plan to visit one another,
and have begun planning an exhibition of all the students’ work to be possibly shown
at both schools in the fall.
Said Bates, “My expectations were to fall in
love with just about everything, which happened, and to really devote myself to
the experience, which also happened.” Concerns about traveling in a foreign
country with UMass students he had never met before, Bates said, were quickly
assuaged; “I felt instantly accepted, and grew to love them and value our
friendships regardless of the relatively short amount of time we’d known each other.”
