Latinates: Departing for Italy, and the work that went into it

I joined this program pretty much on a whim. I can't speak to any sense of propriety or planning that went into my choice to come along, other than that I knew of City College's esteemed study abroad program from friends and family, and I thought it would be a nice way to get out into the world after writing for The Channels.

The school's newspaper doesn't get much attention; every news salon and class day we had we pretty much measured our paper's reception by a number of completely arbitrary likes a given article got on the right-hand side of the screen. Even you reading this, if you're even *here*, probably don't know much about The Channels. So believe me when I say: if you're reading this blog post, and regularly read The Channels, you're doing your City College a great service, and I thank you for your time.

So I joined the 2025 Rome study abroad program to be the blog writer. As a college student and an English major, my only goal right now is to build up my portfolio to pursue a career in journalism. I have future plans to attend the University of San Francisco for their ties to the city's local papers, and I also plan on writing and editing for The Channels more when I come home.

But right now, my winter break has mostly been occupied by preparation.

There were seventeen other notebooks like this for every other European country. I didn't get one because I already have too many empty notebooks.

There are stores purpose-built for traveling. I've spent about twenty days time browsing them. I've gone as far as Oxnard looking for stuff to pack, scanning the itinerary given to us during the first in-person info session. It hasn't been hard--I have a wonderful family to support me, and I can coordinate with the other students traveling with me. Still, I'm suddenly bewildered by the prospect of being in another country, and also having so many other foreign countries surrounding me.

America is big. Texas is nearly the size of France. There's a saying that goes: In Europe, 100 years is short and 100 miles is long, but in America, 100 miles is short and 100 years is long. Europe is almost completely inverted from the cultural perception I've been surrounded by my entire life. Not everyone speaks English, and the English that's spoken is different; you can freely travel between countries, not states, where the laws differ even greater than between Nevada and Utah; you'll eat healthier, walk more, and breathe better oxygen because their cities weren't built by carpenters or highway magnates. Most buildings I'll be passing by on my walk to school will be older than Santa Barbara itself.

So when I saw this notebook with the Romanian flag on it, and I remembered how the name "Romania" comes from "Rome" which comes from the Romans who displaced the Dacians thousands of years ago, I thought it was pretty funny.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. This book sucks in the best way possible.

I'll have no short of reading materials. This is a page of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, a tome I plan on sinking my teeth into on both the trip and both plane rides to and from the new country.

What's funny is that Italian food is known for its tomato sauce, but tomatoes are native to the Americas, so before the Americas were invaded and sacked by Europeans, people back then ate completely differently, before even the concepts of pizza or hamburgers or mashed potatoes were even known in the Western zeitgeist.

The entire concept of "European" is very recent. Europe comes from Greek "Evros," a river at the top of what they considered their world or nation. Today it's known as the Maritsa, and still flows throughout the valleys of Thrace. "Europe" as a unified continent is as alien a concept as tomatoes to the Roman Empire.

I expect this program will come with even more similar revelations. I know the bare minimum, mostly from reading Wikipedia in my free time; once I'm actually *invested* and *submerged* in the culture and world of the living Romans, I hold it to myself to learn even more about their legacies.

The origin of the name "Italy" is unknown. Some scholars say it means "Land of the Young Calf" or something similar, either from Proto-Italo-Celtic or Paleo-European tongues like Etruscan. It's all a blur.

As an English speaker, you can see ghosts of words you know in Italiano. "Sinistre" ("left") and "destre" ("right") correspond to English sinister and dexter, originating from Latin and coming to us from Norman French. Knowing that, the deranged word-freak I am, helped me remember it. But English is Germanic, and the Florentine dialect of Italian that was spread by Dante Alighieri's Inferno is a Romance language, like half-Germanic French or equally-neo-Latin Spanish. This is all college student for "Learning a foreign language is hard, yo."

Luckily, we're in Rome. But when in Rome, do as the Romans; this is why I'm excited to start the program's Italian Language course. I'm excited to be on my own on another continent. I've been to Iceland and Japan, but with Italy, I'm setting foot on the actual Afro-Eurasian landmass for the first time. I look forward to working with my travel-mates to make this an experience worth remembering.

About the blogger:

Noah Manzarek-Naghi is an English major and Sociology minor native to Santa Barbara, California. He enjoys writing fiction, and this previous semester worked as a staff writer for The Channels. He's also a verified language freak who spent is free time reading Italian language textbooks over winter break.