E18-Will Travel for Chocolate

Strangers Abroad

Despising the complacency that is socialized into Italian youth, Rachel from Milan willingly thrusts herself out of her comfort zone which pushes her to rethink who she wants to be in the world. I vividly remember one time while eating alfajores, having one of the best conversations about how we have used our mothers as an example of what not to do (I love my mother, I come from a line of weird and wild women) and we talked about how our mothers were never challenged to push outside of normalized gender roles the way that we, millennial women are now encouraged. How our mothers were limited in the opportunities and expected to just follow the fold, even though they are both so much more than that. I remember feeling a sense of connection with her when she said, “If I don’t leave, I don’t become a better person and I would be restless.”