Belonging - From Italy to facebook

**I think they need a pop-up window to let you know that you've merely saved your post and not quite yet published it...**


The chapter on belonging this week was really a fun chapter to read.  You never really think about belonging or what it means to "belong" to a group.  This chapter made me think back to all the groups I've ever "belonged" to as well as groups I still "belong" to, regardless of my participation in them.  One group that I belonged to in real life has become a group that I belong to online through no fault of those of us in the group - we merely live so far away and were only together for a short period of time.  This group consists of myself and the eight girls that I lived with while I studied in Italy.  Granted, we only lived together for a month while we were studying in Italy and this was in 2006, but I recently received a message on facebook from one of my roommates congratulating me on my engagement and offering her services as a wedding photographer.  What's funny about this is the greeting from her message: "Hey Italian roomie!"  I have become, and I guess I always was, in the small group of "Italian roomies."  I still keep up with some of my other Italian roommates (although not as often as I probably should) but I still comment on their facebook walls and I still "like" their statuses sometimes, but we don't keep in touch that well.  Regardless, all nine of us will always be part of the group "Italian roomies."


I share this story with y'all to point out how Dr. Howard's chapter on belonging worked in the real world and is still working in the online world.  The first thing Dr. Howard talks about that creates a sense of belonging in a group is initiation rituals (p. 130).  This, in Italy, was quite a feat.  I was the only one among my roommates that could speak Italian (in fact, I was there to finish up my undergrad foreign language credits....so I was somewhat dangerous with my Italian) and we lived on the non-touristy side of the river in Florence (little-known fact about Florence - once you cross the river, no one speaks English.  At all.  Period.)  That first night together, we decided to make dinner together in our tiny kitchen that holds 1-2 very small people and have a feast and a toast to our time together in Italy.  That meant we had to go out in our non-English neighborhood and buy food...from people who don't speak English (or at least pretend not to).  This experience (and many like it in the coming days) was our initiation ritual into Italian life (and also made us very good at charades).


The next topic Dr. Howard talks about is stories of origin (p. 131).  In our group we discussed what we were doing in Italy (taking classes), why we chose Florence instead of Rome (can anyone say fashion capitol of Italy?), and what we hoped to gain from the experience (which were many varied reasons including the want to learn what it was like to live in a foreign country).  We all had fairly consistently similar stories of origin which is possibly why nine girls were able to live in a five bedroom apartment together for a month without killing each other - we were all there for the same reasons and we all experienced it together (which is possibly another initiation ritual).


The next topic of discussion in Dr. Howard's book is leveling up rituals (p. 135).  We had none of those, so I'll skip that topic and move on the next which is mythologies (p. 139).  This is where the group moves from real life to online life.  We all have shared experiences and shared stories from our time in Italy - like the hour and a half to two hours it took us to walk from our apartment to the Palazzo Michelangelo (which, by the way, has the best view of Florence with the worst hike known to man), or the time we all went to the wine tasting in Chianti, or all the times the aforementioned roommate asked us to pose for her around the city for her photography class.  Because of these shared stories and shared experiences, we still stay in touch (albeit minimally) through facebook.  These mythologies are what we discuss in our online time together - the shared experience of the photographer roommate taking our pictures and later showing us what her pictures look like and how she was able to use Photoshop to create such stunning pictures allows her to offer her services as a wedding photographer because she's photographed me before and I've seen her work.  I know what to expect from her as a photographer and she knows what to expect from me as a subject.


The next topic that Dr. Howard discusses is symbols and codes (p. 140).  I'm not sure if the rest of the group has the same symbols/codes as I do, but I'm sure we all hold some similar in type.  For example, every time I go to Olive Garden, I think back to when we used to go out to eat together in Florence.  There was a lovely hole-in-the-wall restaurant down the street that we celebrated one of the roommate's birthday at.  The music in the Olive Garden is reminiscent of the music in this quaint, yet sophisticated restaurant.  It takes me back every time.  Additionally, every time I see a picture or a painting or architecture that looks even remotely Italian, I remember how it felt to explore our city and those around us.  Each time something reminds me of Italy, I immediately want to go to facebook and touch base with these girls.  I wonder if they're thinking of Italy too.  I wonder if they miss it as much as I do.  I wonder if they still feel that bond that the group created in our time in Italy.


The final topic that Dr. Howard discusses in his chapter on belonging is protocols, routines, and schemas (141).  This made me giggle a little on the inside when I thought about applying it to our group.  When we were face-to-face whether it was seeing each other around town or coming back to the apartment after class we would shout "Buongiorno, raggazze!" (Good day, girls!).  Now that we're online, its become "Hello Italian roomie!"  I'm kind of sad that we've dropped the Italian from our greeting, but we are no longer in Italy and it seems oddly out of place despite using it multiple times every day to greet one another while we were there.  But that was in the moment and that was in the country and it was more acceptable.  Here, we aren't the same - we're online.  It's easier and quicker for us to use the English online because that's what we know (and our computers know it without giving us spelling errors) and it seems more appropriate for how we interact in our new online "group".


Hopefully through this long story of my interactions with the girls I lived with in Italy, I've shown how our group has changed and morphed with our move from living together to online only interactions.