"Become comfortable with the uncomfortable" while interning at l'Arche Bologna

My name is John Cook and I am a rising Junior at the University of Notre Dame. I am majoring in Psychology and minoring in Italian and Business Economics. Last school year, I was accepted into the Foreign Languages Internship Program, a program through Notre Dame that funds students majoring or minoring in a language for a summer internship abroad.

Through this program, I found an internship with L’Arche in Bologna, Italy. L’Arche is an international community with the goal of creating unity between those with disabilities and those without. The community has a location in Bologna as well as one in Rome. These are just two of the many communities scattered throughout every continent besides Antarctica. The L’Arche communities provide a place for people with disabilities to learn and grow with the help of volunteers and full time employees. The communities create opportunities for inclusivity and creativity.

My internship consists of living in the community for about 3 and a half weeks. The other week and a half of my five week internship will be spent on a tandem cycling trip through the Dolomite mountain range in northern Italy. The Bologna community places an emphasis on biking, with a large group going on a bike trip every Wednesday through the countryside of Bologna. This is the first time the community has attempted the trip to the Dolomites, but last year a group biked from Bologna to Rome.

The cycling trip through the Dolomites is an opportunity to showcase inclusivity in L’Arche. Each employee or volunteer will ride on a tandem bicycle or a tricycle with an individual with a disability. We will work together as one, showcasing the unity between those “with and without” disability, a motto of L’Arche. We leave on June 30th and continue through the first week of July. Every night, we will stop at a new hotel or hostel, eating meals together, and spending the nights bonding. Spending all of this time together is a chance to grow and connect together.

In the weeks that I am not cycling through the Dolomites, I will be living and working at the community in Bologna. In the short time since I started in Italy, I have met countless friends in the L’Arche community. Many of the people here speak very little to no English. I myself am just an intermediate Italian speaker. Regardless of the language barrier, everyone has been incredibly welcoming and friendly. I already feel like I am a part of the L’Arche family.

My day to day consists of meeting in the “saloon,” a large meeting room and then doing various activities with small groups. Everyday the activities are different and take up a few hours in the morning before lunch. The activities I have done consist of gardening, rock climbing at a local gym, training for the Special Olympics, and of course, the bicycle rides. I am paired with one or two employees and a few individuals with disabilities. The patients at L’Arche have various different types of disabilities like autism, down syndrome, and brain damage, among other intellectual disabilities.

Everyday, I have lunch and dinner with the community. These are some of the best times for bonding as everyone eats lunch together in the saloon and for dinner, I get to eat with a different group who live in the L’Arche community. Meals are a great way for me to get to know the people I am working with and by doing so, practice my Italian speaking skills. In addition to this all of the meals are Italian cuisines, broadening my understanding of Italian dishes and also the manners and customs of Italian meals.

I have had the privilege of becoming acquainted with one nineteen year old boy, Manuele, who has down syndrome. What some might think of as an impediment to a normal life, Manu does not acknowledge. He is full of life and makes every one of my days better. Manu has lower level speaking abilities, so communicating with him is actually easier for me. Both of us, with a smaller Italian vocabulary, don’t feel the need to talk about complicated topics. Instead, we joke about leaving L’Arche to go to the beach or complain about how hot it is. Often, I can struggle with more complicated conversations, so my chats with Manu are the most helpful conversations I can have to further my Italian skills.

At the start of my internship, I was a little uncomfortable being in a foreign nation all alone, but I have grown quite comfortable at L’Arche. One aspect that has helped is having the afternoons and the weekends to myself. In my free time, I get to watch the TV shows I enjoy and read, and all of the sudden I feel right at home. The best part of the free time I get, though, is exploring Italy. I have traveled on the weekends and have seen Rome, the Amalfi Coast, and Venice, not to mention the city of Bologna. Italy is a beautiful and unique place, quite different from my home in the States.

So far, every day has been an exciting new adventure. This trip was an opportunity for me to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. If someone told me a year ago that I would be spending a month working in a foreign nation with a community that knows little English, I would never have believed them. As I look to grow into a fully formed adult, every chance that I get to experience something new or different is a chance for me to develop. I cannot wait to spend a week in the Dolomites and see some of the best views in the world, but I don’t think my biggest takeaway from this trip will be the sights that I see, but the lessons that I learned.