Baylor University Student Travels to Italy

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Katie Bradshaw is a 2021 graduate of Crockett High School. She is a senior at Baylor University, with a major in Public Relations and a minor in Film and Digital Media. She is scheduled to graduate this year with a Bachelor’s degree – after only three years in college. 

By Katie Bradshaw

Special to The Messenger

WACO – Pizza, pasta, cannolis and gelato were all I knew when I first landed in Catania, Sicily, Italy, but that soon changed. I spent five weeks in Sicily, Italy living and learning alongside five other students from Baylor University, as well as my professor and his family. 

When I began this journey I did not know any of these people, but they all became family very quickly. We all went to Italy to study photography and capture the beautiful country as best as we could through a lens and let me just say, that is hard to do when everything there looks like a postcard.

We spent the majority of our trip in Syracuse, Sicily. While our apartment itself resided in Syracuse, we would walk to the Island of Ortigia for classes, dinner and more. Ortigia was about a 30-minute walk away, but the walk was so beautiful that time passed by so quickly. Class was usually every weekday at 10 a.m. and we would look over the photographs that we captured for the different assignments we had. Our professor would assign different projects that would not only allow us to grow in photography but also immerse us in the culture.

One of the first assignments we had was to photograph 10 different people from Ortigia.

This project allowed us to meet and build connections with so many people there. I remember taking a photo of a man who worked at a little restaurant for this assignment and towards the end of the trip I was walking to the grocery store and he saw me on the side of the road walking and pulled over to say hello because he also remembered me. This inviting, welcoming and joyful behavior was something common among the residents there. There was not one soul that we met that was not excited to see us and hear why we were in Sicily.

Honestly, the people there had to have been one of my favorite parts. Everyone was so friendly and helpful. I did not know any Italian before traveling there, but surprisingly enough most people knew enough English to get by and we were all able to make it work. If we needed help conversing, translating apps were usually able to do the trick, but most of the time we were able to get by.

We did a little bit of traveling in Sicily, but we never went to the mainland of Italy. In Sicily, we visited Noto, Agrigento, Monreale, Palermo, and of course Syracuse and Ortigia.

Everywhere we went was beautiful. We visited many beaches, climbed Mount Etna, went to a Greek Theatre (and saw the Greek play Medea), and saw ruins and catacombs. The views were absolutely incredible. The weather was also pretty amazing compared to this Texas heat. In Italy, most rooms have their own heating and air unit and for the first week that I was there, I just left my balcony doors open instead of turning the air on because it was about 60 degrees. It soon started to heat up, but was usually in the 80s for the rest of the trip. That alone is a great reason to visit Sicily.

While in Palermo, Italy, I saw what became one of my top three favorite parts of the trip.

We visited a photography exhibit of Richard Avedon’s work. Avedon has shot photography for Vogue, Harpar’s Bazaar, Elle, Versace, Life, Calvin Klein, and more. He has photographed some incredible celebrities like Brooke Shields, Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, Audrey Hepburn, Andy Warhol, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Tupac Shakur to just name a few. He is most known for his portrait style of photography and I am not quite sure why I loved the exhibit so much, but his work is just breathtaking. I could have spent an entire day there. I personally love fashion photography and Avedon has a lot of that in his portfolio.

Along with all the favorite activities, there is food that is outstanding. I cannot even begin to describe the wonderful food that I had. One of the things that surprised me when I was in Italy is how it is normal to eat pasta for lunch. When I think of pasta I usually think of it as a heavier food, but the pasta in Italy was so fresh that you did not need a nap after eating it. The food was also very decently priced. Most pizzas would start at six euros and then go up depending on toppings. I had the opportunity to go to an Italian cooking class where we all learned how to make true tomato sauce, cannolis and more. I loved all the food there, but to know that I wouldn’t be able to recreate some of it in the United States was even more exciting. I never thought I would be able to experience a trip quite like this. It truly was life-changing and as most people who have studied abroad or experienced a different culture would say, I do see the world differently now. If you ever get the opportunity to go to Sicily, go.

You will not regret it.