The question of who I was
and where I belonged to assumed a whole different meaning. People would ask me where I was
from and I'd respond, "The ITALIAN part of Switzerland." "Oh, Switzerland.
Do you yodel?" Yodeling is probably the most Swiss German thing a person can do.
No self respecting "Ticinese" would be caught dead yodeling. "No, I
don't yodel and I don't wear 'Leder Hosen' either." I'd reply in disgust.
The longer I was away from home however, the more I began to appreciate even the Swiss
German parts of my "previous life." My grandmother's pies were to die for and I
liked the way we celebrated some of our holidays. During the slide shows about my country
(which AFS students are often asked to give to some community group or other) I spoke
equally of the area North of the Alps and the Ticino. I was beginning to feel o.k. being
of mixed cultures. Also, after the initial culture shock, I became increasingly aware of
how I was getting used to living in California and liked it. Some things of course were
very easy to get used to: the sun, the beaches with the beautiful girls,
open-air-Jacuzzis...Needless to say, by the
time I got back home my cultural identity was more questionable than ever. In addition to
being half Swiss Italian and half Swiss German I now had acquired all sorts of
"bad" American habits and even a few from other cultures I came in contact with
during my year abroad. My "dress code" had gone from strictly Italian to an
international mixture of dubious taste, at least in the eyes of the purists. I won't even
mention my tastes in food but let's just say that I often hear the word "weird"
associated with my name. |
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It gets better. I forgot
to mention that my Swiss family (ex AFS students often feel the need to clarify which
family they are talking about) didn't consist, of a father a mother and the children.
Rather it was a grandmother, a grandfather and two children, my older sister and
myself. I also forgot to mention that because of a series of circumstances too complicated
and lengthy to explain here, shortly after my return to Switzerland I was adopted by my
U.S. English teacher, a native Hawaiian living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most
important of all, during that same period I fell madly in love with and American visiting
the Ticino.
Beat with his Hawaiian
father |