Lyon: Week 1

I discovered my love for storytelling around a long wooden table shared with my mom, dad, grandparents and younger brother. Food and stories have always gone together like my dad’s homemade pizza dough and my mom’s homemade ricotta, like my Nanny’s thumbprint cookies and my Pop’s devotion to sweets. As a kid, I would listen to the stories my family had to share—about their days, about their shared business, about their dreams. I was hungry for them, and I wanted to tell my own.

I started writing make-believe stories which turned into poetry which turned into journalism after I took a class with the School of the New York Times. I applied to colleges thinking I would study English or anthropology, but switched my major to journalism when I decided on going to Oregon. I wanted to tell stories and put my writing skills to the test, specifically in the shape of long-form, narrative pieces like the ones I’d read in The Atlantic or The New Yorker.

This past year, during my sophomore year of college, I called my mom a lot to tell her I think I chose the wrong major. As I was moving through my second set of journalism classes, I also began a yearlong creative writing workshop. When I felt bogged down by the inverted pyramid structure, I turned to poetry and creative nonfiction to share stories in a way that felt natural to me. Like breathing. My classmates in Reporting 1 seemed to have hunger that I did not feel, and I was working for a communications team on campus that left me confused not only as a writer but also a person. On my last meeting with my boss for that team, he told me that my writing was flat and that every time he looked at me he saw a girl who was sad.

The thing I love most about journalism is that it is rooted in truth, and I did not believe in the validity of either of those two statements. I have a lot left to learn about writing, but I know I’ve worked hard to find a voice that understands the complexities of life. And as for the comment about my sadness, all I can say is I’ve known it but I also know what true happiness feels like the same way I know the winding curves of the country roads that will lead me back to the house I grew up in. I quit the job and called my mom. She told me that pretty soon, I would be in Lyon, eating roasted meat or a croissant and learning about a new beat. I just needed to wait and see what my study abroad could teach me.

I’ve been in Lyon for a week now, and I’ve already found myself eating roasted meat that reminds me of Nanny’s pot roast and croissants so buttery and warm it feels almost religious. I’ve also felt a new type of hunger, not one that food can necessarily fill, but one that telling stories about food and the people who make it might.

To say I embarked on this study abroad in hopes it would inform me on what I should do for the rest of my life would be dramatic. Instead, I hope it informs me on who I should be, right now.

I hope by the end of it I can order something (and maybe even have a conversation) in French without getting flustered.

I hope I gain a greater confidence in myself as a journalist, a traveler, an eater, a friend.

I hope I taste life and understand its complex palette. I hope this makes me only hungry for more of it.