I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
Maya Angelou
The internet is great for researching weather and fun tourist spots. I try to research etiquette, too, though, in my experience there is no one etiquette. I’ve never been anywhere that is really a cultural monolith without any socioeconomic, religious, or ethnic variation. It’s still helpful to read about how to be on my best behavior abroad, but being kind and respectful almost always involves a certain amount of improvisation. Research helps, but it’s not enough.
I remain both frustrated and soothed by the constraints of predictability, so I seek adventures and then research the crap out of them in advance. What I couldn’t research at all were the things that were probably going to impact me the most. As a student, I have no say in my lodging or my housemates. I didn’t know my neighborhood or my amenities. I could assume it would be reasonably close to the campus and have those things students reasonably need, like wifi, but who’s to say what the deciding parties (Berkeley Study Abroad and Study in Portugal Network (SiPN) actually deem reasonable.
We arrived at the Ponta Delgada Airport as a cluster of acquaintances and strangers. Some of us had met briefly at an orientation (that seemed forever ago by the time we arrived). Some of us had some Berkeley swag visible. These things helped us to identify each other, and we all sort of clustered together. None of us really knew what to expect, and the person who was picking us up was on her way, but not there yet.
Some of us took the opportunity to buy SIM cards and/or get coffee and snacks. Then our professor’s logistical assistant arrived and packed every one of us from that flight into a van that seemed too small for so many people and all the luggage we’d need for the next two months. Then we got to the narrow streets of the neighborhoods we’d be living in, and the van seemed much too big. Still, by some combination of miracle and superpowers our driver managed to distribute us to our new homes.
Most of the students seemed to be fairly evenly divided between two hostels, Thomas Place and, I think the other one was Marina Lounge, but I’m not sure. I wasn’t in either hostel. Our professor was very kind to us old broads, which is to say, the three women over forty in her class. She insisted that we be given the apartment that had been selected for her. This was a huge blessing.
The kids were able to check into their rooms right away, but our place wouldn’t be ready for hours. It is strange the extent to which when I am at home I daydream constantly about traveling and when I am traveling all I want is a place to nest. I wanted to see my home away from home, unpack, imagine where I’d take my morning coffee, etc. When the van dropped us off at our address, we were only allowed to hand off our bags.
For the next few hours we were set free to explore Ponta Delgada. We being myself and the one other woman in my household who had arrived early. Many of the students in this group were Portuguese majors or otherwise fluent, or at least semi-fluent, in Portuguese. Not my household. Neither one of us knew more than we had googled in the few short weeks leading up to this trip. Into the deep end we went, all at once.
Cool. Cool. Two mature women set loose in a strange town where neither of us know the language. Why not? Fortunately, we were still on something approximating company manners at that point, keeping our freak flags folded in tidy triangles out of each other’s view so very little mischief was had that day.
We discovered Café Central, which was kinda like an Azorean Denny’s. None of the food was great, but none of the food was bad either. The menu, and at least some of the staff were English-Portuguese bilingual and you could sit on the patio and people watch as if the whole town were going to walk by eventually. Also, their hours were the best on the island. We often ended up there on Sundays, when everything else was closed. Definitely not the best food on São Miguel, but they were hard to beat for convenience.
We headed back towards home, which is a weird thing to call some place you’ve never been, but even if it wasn’t yet that day, it definitely became something like home to me over the month. On the first day we weren’t quite sure where it was and made a few wrong turns. Google maps can only do so much if my reception is spotty and my reception is often spotty. Still somehow we found our way.
My traveling companion called dibs on the single room with the big bed, leaving me in the double with the roommate who was yet to arrive. I unpacked, satisfied both with my sense of being home and the knowledge that my grand adventure had finally begun. I think that eleven year old me would be proud to know that I was traveling the world, almost as much as she’d be horrified to know that I was in school in my forties.
Fearless was my middle name
R. E. M.
But somewhere there, I lost my way
Everyone walks the same
Expecting me to step
The narrow path they’ve laid
Walk Unafraid
Leave a Reply