Cutting the Cheese

With a proud flourish, my Italian host mom placed in front of me on the dinner table a massive block of Parmesan. Confused, I looked up at her questioningly. Was this dinner? As she bustled back into the kitchen, I squirmed in my seat to try to look past her, to see if she was going to bring out anything more to eat. No dice. She came back into the dining room with her own plate of solid Parmesan, pointed at mine and said, oblivious to my disbelief, “Mangia.” Eat. I reached for my fork so as not to offend, but I didn’t eat yet. I needed to watch and learn how to go about eating.... a block of cheese. Using her knife like a pickaxe, my host mom broke chunks off of the block, scooped them up with her fork and devoured them with obvious relish. So I hesitantly took my own knife and copied her gestures, puckering as I placed the first dry chunk in my mouth. “’E buono, no?” My host mother was nodding expectantly as though prompting me to exclaim over how delicious I found the cheese. “Mmmm,” I agreed as fervently as possible, and grabbed the water bottle. When I’d washed down the bite, I added with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, “’E delizioso.” She smiled in delight and returned to her own block, and I doggedly persevered with mine. At least it’ll be a funny story to tell, I thought with each dry bite. After all, who else has Parmesan for dinner?

I lived in Italy for nine months, the entirety of my junior year of high school. When I first arrived, I had a strong and inexplicable aversion to cheese. The only kind I would touch was strong cheddar, and I disliked even that if it was too soft. But living in another country held me down and forced me to become a less picky eater. Terrified of offending my loving and eager-to-please Italian host family, I would eat whatever was put in front of me, and that ranged from fried eel to Brie’n’Bratwurst to cinnamon pasta. Of course, the majority of what my host mom served was your average delicious Italian pasta, but there was so much more of it than I was used to eating that it was still difficult to finish it all; yet I forced myself to eat every meal put in front of me, simply because it was a tangible way of immersing myself in Italian culture. As a result, I felt Italian even on days when my language skills went out the window, because I could down the same portions as my host brother (an admirable feat, believe me!).


The cool thing is that I thrilled my host family with my enthusiasm for their dishes, I got some meat on my bones, and I discovered a passion for pasta that will last forever; not only that, I taught my body to deal with unfamiliar and foreign foods. I’d like to challenge myself to live in a lot of different and exciting places during my life, so a willingness to try new foods should come in handy. And I think that if I’m willing to try new food, it says more than just that I have broad tastes; it says that I’m willing to throw myself headlong into the living and learning experience that is what cultural immersion is all about. I am ready and willing to try new things, be they internships or projects or something as monumental as living abroad again. In fact, after surviving a year of eating cinnamon pasta and blocks of Parmesan, I wouldn’t want to take on anything less than exciting!