Week Two - Reportage

It's dark by the time we realize we can't find the train station. Packed with the tastes of Italy--a layered, dark chocolate pastry from an old world bakery with glossed wood counters, a scoop of lemon gelato beside steps stretching the entire length of the main square, an entire Caprese pizza straight from a wood burning oven--I try to guide myself and six other study abroad students down the side of the mountain (giù, giù, keep going down, we'll find the station) winding past expanses of night-time Perugia and cavities of McDonalds, shuttered newspaper stands, and dark forms of people crouched in doorways. We form a pocket with ourselves, the girls layered on the inside against stares and repetitive pick up lines: beautiful, beautiful, the only word that tastes Italian to them. Giù, giù we go, spiraling downward, learning each other's limits with each step. We pause along the way, ask two girls how to get to the train station. They are awesome, one tells me. She's young, maybe nineteen, hooked at the elbow with her friend before the unlit--closed, in any language--bus station. They are awesome because they point us down a curve in the road, promising a train station, in English. They are proud of their demolition of the language barrier, of this opportunity to reach across the ocean. I wish I could do the same.