Finally home (at the Villa) after nine days in Sicily! On Friday, October 7th, I dragged myself out of bed at 4am to pack for a Sicilian excursion. At 6:00, four other students and I were picked up and taken to the airport for our flight to Palermo, Sicily. Before even boarding the plane, the adventures began. When it was my turn to step up to the ticket counter, I was prepared with a passport...but not my passport. It was only then that I found out that another girl (who was in Venice for the weekend) and I had switched passports accidentally a few weeks back. Thankfully, I had a copy of my passport, birth certificate, and drivers license and was able to continue on to Palermo with my group.
In Palermo, the five of us from Pepperdine (along with 2 Italians about our age) took a bus to Corleone, which is where we stayed through Monday, volunteering with an organization called ARCI (Associazione Ricreativa e Culturale Italiana). We were taken to a "cooperativa"in Corleone, which has been tasked with cultivating fields taken from the Mafia in Sicily and producing food which is then sold, then proceeds going back to the general public. Our job was supposed to be helping in the tomato and almond fields, but because of the excessive rain, the plans changed. Several days were spent touring Corleone and learning about the mafia and its history in Sicily. This was probably the first time we experienced true culture shock, because we were thrown out of our Pepperdine bubble and into a house full of Sicilians - Sicilians who smoked indoors, didn't know our language, and seemed to get too close to our personal bubbles for comfort. We also felt like we had very little control over or say in what we were doing - we were at the mercy of our hosts. For example, one day they packed us into the car and drove us through the countryside for an hour, ending up back in Palermo. We got out of the van, followed our driver through the street and up a smoky staircase of a building, and entered the studio of a local tv news station. Without hesitating a moment to explain or ensure our personal comfort, they herded us into a small space behind the anchorman. An anchorman who is wanted by the mafia. Appearing with him wasn't enough though; we were featured throughout the entire newscast, and each read a small script in Italian (we didn't understand it, but hopefully it wasn't anything serious enough to get on the mafia's hit list!).
