A New Beginning: Excerpts from My Travel Journal

Let's face it, 2020 was tough and probably a year that we all want to forget. Never before have we wanted to celebrate a New Year so much, with hopes of travel and new discoveries. In a time when practically everything is virtual, it makes the tangible sentimental things like my travel journal have more meaning. I thought it would be fun to make you laugh with a look into my diary during a milestone moment of my life.

Image | Anna Savino

A significant end and new beginning for me was hopping on that Delta plane with a one- way ticket to a tiny town called Saluzzo in the Piemonte region 16 years ago. I could go on for days about this experience and living the expat life, but luckily I have nine journals full of every single experience and observation that I had. My first travel journal captures everything that encompassed my new beginning or my nuovo inizio. Here are some fun excerpts from my 22-year-old self as I faced my new beginning.

A peak inside my journal
Image | Anna Savino

October 19th, 2004 2:30 pm – San Francisco Airport

“A good omen! As I was boarding the airplane there was a giant rainbow over the planes on the runway! Here we go...take off and now I am getting teary eyed.”

I was extremely lucky to be in First Class as a gift from my parents for this courageous move. I was so anxious I ended up taking advantage of free drinks and remember being in tears the whole way and hungover by the time I got to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris!

October 20th, 2004 – Torino/Busca – First night at my temporary host's for dinner

“ I think I have eaten more cheese tonight than I have in the last 4 years (granted I was a vegan for the previous year!). Now I am sleeping in this funny room downstairs in a twin bed and I have specific instructions to put on a robe and come up tomorrow morning for coffee.”

October 21st, 2004 – Busca 

“I think I have already had the true “Italian Experience” in 24 hours! After a big dinner last night with ravioli, lots of cheese and a strange fizzy red wine, I slept in till 10:00 am and put on my robe like I was told. My host made the coffee on the stove and put a plate full of cookies in front of me which she called biscuits! ...My host and I had a funny but intimidating conversation. She told me that I looked so young and like a baby as she dressed me [in] her big quilted vest to go outside. I had no winter clothes from California and man, I feel more like I am in Switzerland than Italy! She told me to make sure I didn't show my stomach under my shirts because I had to look older and professional. I will be teaching conversational business English and must learn a different way to speak, the British way. Eek - I will cross that bridge when I come to it! When I got dressed and came out with wet hair, she was astonished and brought me into her vintage bathroom to blow dry it FOR me!

“I am full even before we have lunch today, “basta”! The family is always making fun of me here but in a nice way. They can not believe that I have never had roasted chestnuts! When I told them in California we don't eat them, she said, “ but my son lived on Chestnut street in San Francisco!” 

Now it all makes sense looking back. From an Italian's perspective, not wearing an undershirt or “maglia della salute” (health shirt) to keep your torso warm, would definitely cause you to get a cold! Even more scandalous was that I planned on leaving the house with wet hair! Now for that, I could die!

October 22nd, 2004 Saluzzo & Cuneo

“We finally found an apartment for me but there was nothing inside it, not even a dishwasher or washing machine! There is a dry cleaners across the street but my host said she would do my laundry for me or I have to wash everything by hand. Thoughts of my dad pleading [with] me not to waste my years of education to become an old school Italian woman washing clothes in the river with a washboard popped into my mind!”

“The host and I had more conversation at lunch today and I was stuffed for the day... again. We went back to the school and she did my hair like I was 5 years old and told me to go out for a walk while she finished watching soap operas until the school opened back up at 2:30 pm! I felt like a fool with my bumpy hair all done up and window shopped while I worried about what the heck past perfect tense and past participles were!”

November 9th, 2004 - Saluzzo

“I wouldn't mind actually going home at this point. It's really hard not having anyone to talk to. All day I try to act chipper but can only speak like a toddler. I miss not being comfortable in ANY element, every minute of the day...Since all the stores close at 7:30 pm and there are no take-out places, I had absolutely nothing to eat unless I wanted to go to a restaurant and pretend to understand Italian and spend the evening alone out to eat. No, thank you. I looked in the fridge and all I had was milk that I won't drink, gross tonic water that I thought was regular at the store and tomato sauce. I decided to pull out the tomato sauce and put it on 3 pieces of cracker-hard bread type thingies from the cupboard that they usually eat for breakfast . The only other thing I had was hard kiwis and gross wrinkly apples that they left for me. So I had 2 sour hard kiwis and a spoonful of Nutella, some tea and went to bed. Pathetic.”

Those hard bread crackers I described are actually little toasted crackers shaped as bread slices called Fette Biscottati that Italians eat in the morning with jam and Nutella. I still don't understand why they don't just toast real bread and prefer these awful pre-toasted bite-sized mini toasts. Also surprisingly, this area is one of the largest cultivation areas for kiwis and apples. But they were not perfect waxy gigantic ones like you would find at an American supermarket. Now I appreciate the imperfect apples!

As you can see from stepping into my life, we have all experienced ups and downs and particular challenges that seem unbearable at that time. But looking back, I laugh and realize that this has made me a very strong, independent, and fluently- speaking Italian person! I searched through all my journals trying to find my entry about one special moment:

One morning, I had a sort of “out of body” experience where I was almost watching this scene from the outside. That morning I had to open the school by myself, figure out the old keys, and open up all the big dusty shutters leading to the balcony which looked out over the big main street in Cuneo. Although it was winter, the sun was shining into the classroom and a monarch butterfly flew around my head and nearly landed on my shoulder. The butterfly kept me company and I could almost hear it whispering in my ear, “this is the place for you.”. There was a magical sense of calm and acceptance at that very moment and every time I have a monarch butterfly fly in circles around me, it always seems to be in one of my happy places.

So remember this saying from my refrigerator magnet:

Image | Anna Savino