The first thing I did when I got my French visa in the mail was look up flights from Paris to Bari.
Bari is the seaside capital city of the Puglia region, what we call the heel of the boot. About 30 minutes outside of Bari is a small city called Altamura and four and a half years ago I spent a winter living there as an au pair.
I needed a break from LA and was feeling that urge again. Ever since I studied abroad in Florence in 2012, I would feel a tug every year or so that pulled me back to Italy. For the language, for my host family, for the culture, for the piece of myself I left there.
But this time I wanted to fully re-immerse myself for longer than just a trip. I wanted to live and give my language another chance at thriving.
So I found a Pugliese host family on a website called AuPairWorld.com. I had never heard of Altamura or Puglia before so it was perfect. I wanted to be somewhere I wouldn’t run into ten thousand American exchange students around every corner. For 3 months leading up to my arrival, the family and I video chatted every few weeks.
The kids were twin 6-year-old boys and an eight-year-old girl. When I landed in Bari’s tiny airport in December 2017 I was met with the biggest bear hugs by the three bambini I had just met for the first time in person. That sums up how the rest of my time there went.
Bear hugs, hide and seek, tickle wars (guerra di solletico!). My host dad bought a guitar so I could jam during my time there and every few days the kids and I would play music (…make noise….) together. I can’t express how lucky I got with this family. They already had a nanny and 4 grandparents who were always around, so I quickly became more like their American cousin than an au pair.
The mom took me out for tea and I joined her on her girls’ nights out. The dad talked to me about their lentil distribution business (yes, the business of lentils!) and let me test their newest chickpea-based chip products. I went to someone’s grandma’s 100th birthday and stayed with my host dad’s sister’s family for a weekend in Florence.
On the side, I tried to do my music thing. I met some local music people and played a few shows in Altamura and Bari. I made some local friends in Bari and every other weekend I would take the train to the city to meet up with someone new who would offer to be my tour guide for the afternoon.
How I was there for only two and a half months baffles me. When I left, I told myself I would visit them as often as I was able to visit my blood family in Iran.
How could strangers become family in just 2.5 months? How could a place feel like home so quickly?
When I got back to LA in March 2018, life took me by storm and no one really asked much about my life in Italy— did they even care? So I never brought it up. I released music, I went on my first tour, recorded my first album, toured some more, but not a day went by that I didn’t think about Puglia.
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I blinked and four and a half years flew by. Most of it was Covid, but still, I feel guilty for how much time has passed. Over the last year, every time I’ve thought of Puglia I’ve cried. I can’t fully explain it. I get a pang in my gut. My throat tightens. I think of the corso, the street that runs through the historic center of Altamura where we would stroll every Sunday morning. I think about my little Italian pseudo-siblings, how tall they must be now, maybe they can even speak English? I think about the bread and the cheese. I think about how easy it was making friends— Pugliese people are so warm and vibrant and open they make you feel at home (well damnit, I’m making myself cry here!!)
Last week I found out my cousin didn’t know I speak Italian. Last month I found out one of my closest friends in LA didn’t know I speak French fluently. How could such big parts of myself go unknown?
It’s like I’ve been living two lives, the real one here and a secret one there, and it makes me nauseous to think how much of myself I've left out over the past five to ten years.
But it’s alll gooood y’all. That’s why I’m moving to Europe.
To be in a place where I can try being all the versions of myself at the same time. And it helps that a flight from Paris to Bari costs less than one Uber in LA!
So proud to read you are living up to the most authentic version of yourself. Let’s connect in Europe sometime :)