Students’ interactions bring life to annual class trip to Sicily

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.”