Identity Library

Veronika Becher 0:00
Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of identity library. My name is Veronika Becher, and today I again again with my favorite person on earth. I'm joking. No, you are Lucas. Chiscato. Chiscato. Chiscato,

since we're gonna start about talking about Italy a little we gotta, we gotta do it the right way. Chiscato. Chiscato, okay, I apologize. I feel like I never can properly pronounce you. I'm just confused in what language is it should pronounce your last name. So we're starting a new episode. And dear listeners, I hope you have a wonderful week whenever this episode is getting aired, but maybe to give you a little bit of rundown why we're doing this episode, what's happening? What are we talking about? Again, with Lucas, I'm joking.

Basically, our fellowship program had this family breakfast thing

where you invite like the name says your family over so you can together, you know, meet each other and sit and talk to each other parents and be terrified, because I was literally without a family, and I was the only kid there without a family. That's how it felt like maybe there was more Cold Wars, but it was just terrifying,

and nothing terrifies me more than hearing from someone's parents that they listen to on podcast episodes. No, but the way my my parents said it too was, was really funny. What did they say? No, go ahead, you can tell the story.

Lucas Ciscato 1:37
But my parents were like, they went up to Veronica, were like, We know everything about you.

Veronika Becher 1:44
And when Abdullah tells me that I'm a stalker because I listened to his podcast, well, I'm sorry, but Lucas parents probably just reached a point where I don't know they are not stalkers. Don't worry. But I'm really honored to hear that there's a whole family listening, apparently, to my podcast while driving, and I realized the most frequent listeners to my podcast are people that sit in cars. Maybe I should just start like a car podcast at this point, and everyone is crossing, stuck somewhere in traffic or trying to get somewhere else, and it's always these, like long trips where people just listen to my podcast. So they walked up to me and, like Luca said, and were like, yeah, we'll listen to your podcast. And what did your dad say?

Lucas Ciscato 2:32
Well, apparently, with the podcast we recorded, I don't know exactly when it was, but a few weeks ago, month me, over a month ago, I don't know,

I kind of apparently neglected my Italian culture too much and did not talk about you. Shame on you, especially, especially when I said that that Australia to do how to make coffee better than Italians. Shame on you again, triple, shame on you.

Veronika Becher 3:04
It's like this joke from Mulan, if you've watched it, shame on you. Shame on your cow. Shame on everything.

I love this one, yeah, one scene. I love Mulan, but basically we're not. We're gonna come back to Milan. But today we're initially gonna talk actually about his heritage that is connected to Italy. And I know we have so many Italian students on campus that I could have picked for this episode, but no, we need to defend against the Dutch.

Go ahead, my dear friend, however you want to start maybe well,

Lucas Ciscato 3:45
you want to give our listeners a little rundown of who you are, short please, because they probably listened to it already now sometimes. So basically, my name is Lucas, like you heard. And I was born in Mexico. I lived in Hong Kong, in well, in Mexico, Hong Kong, China, the Netherlands, for a year, and I stayed in Italy for a few months trying to get my visa to move to the US, which I did in 2013

so I've kind of lived all over the place. And my mom is Dutch, and my dad's Italian. So everything I've lived through has also been through the cultural lens of

a Dutch mom and an Italian dad, and through I also learned how to speak Dutch and Italian from them. And I used to be fluent in Spanish when I lived in Mexico, until I kind of lost that which I will hopefully learn pick up soon again.

Veronika Becher 4:45
Thank you. Just chef kiss. That was the best short introduction that I could have ever expected from you. So since we neglected one culture over another, we have to talk about Italy, right? Yeah.

Lucas Ciscato 5:00
And I would love you to start so maybe with the basics. When did you start living in Italy? Like, how old were you? So, for living in Italy was literally just like a few months of time. It was in

like right after school ended in the Netherlands. We went to Italy, to an apartment that we still own, that my dad actually grew up in. So my dad lived there his entire life, and then inherited the apartment from my from his, from my grandpa, from his dad, and yeah, we still it's an Airbnb. So if you want to stay in via tedious ski Padova,

it's it's available, and it helps us sustain the fact that we have an apartment there. So it's on Airbnb,

but you have to pay me for giving it the platform to advertise your Airbnb. But yes, this is how I make money

and fund other people. I'm joking,

Veronika Becher 6:07
maybe for people that never been to Italy and don't know where this is located, can you like, allocate where we are? Where is the Airbnb? Like on the map, North East.

Lucas Ciscato 6:21
Like a 30 minute drive from Venice, perfect. Thank you. That was exactly what so people, you've heard it, we have a trustworthy person right now on stage that you can trust that their Airbnb is going to be okay and you're not going to live in some random shady corner. You know, have you? Have you ever experienced that, by the way, living in a shady corner? Yes, the I mean, if we go for a very random side track, the hostel that I stayed up stayed at in Brussels was the sketchiest place I've ever been. Brussels is the most shady city I have ever visited, and specifically where my hostel was and where I was walking at like 2am in the night. I should not say that, because the person was sitting next to me when we had one of the dinners with the faculty. It was actually from Belgium. Oh,

Veronika Becher 7:20
but I agree on that point. So please, if anyone from Belgium is listening, please don't take it to heart. But I agree in a certain way. It's just a mix of everything, but it's okay. You know, we love our Belgian people.

Lucas Ciscato 7:35
Go ahead. So you lived in Italy, and would you say there were certain traditions that are typical Italian traditions, or lifestyle that lifestyles, that's crazy,

aspects of your lifestyle that were influenced by Italian culture? One thing is drinking coffee every day

I grew up from like, I don't know, I think from when I was probably around eight, maybe even younger, maybe not. I think even younger, I'm not sure exactly, not drinking coffee. I see the face you're making. I was like I did. I did try coffee. I did like it, but with a lot of sugar then.

But

my I grew, what I was going to say is, I grew up making the coffee for my parents, like they we have this, like traditional mocha pot that you put on the stove top and

it, yeah, it makes a an espresso shot. And, well, actually, my brother started drinking coffee very young. My older brother because he because it can help with ADHD, and because it's a stimulant that helps. I'm not

going to try to explain the science behind it. You can fact check me right now and say that it's not true, but that's what my parents

that's what my parents believed or did at this time, instead of trying to use medicine or something like that, just to see if there was a an alternative that might work, and because I am a younger brother to him, obviously, I was jealous that my older brother was got to drink this special drink that my parents loved that I couldn't drink. So I I convinced them to also let me start drinking coffee at a young age.

So that's one thing. What else My family always did value like having family dinners. So we would always, I mean, that's a very Italian thing, trying to gather the family as much as possible. And we, we took that and we did it every,

always, every night, when we lived, when we could, when we lived everywhere, except for when we moved to the US, like.

After we all were in, like, high school, middle school, high school time period, because the US is like so hustle bustle culture and try to do as much as possible, and like, everything's all over the place. My little brother would play soccer until a certain time I would be in theater or speech and debate all night long, and my older brother was doing marching band and was doing these other things. So we all were kind of spread thin and to the point where it's really hard to find a time where we could eat dinner together. So in the last couple of years that we kind of lost that tradition, but it was always a thing that we we really valued as a family, and we still try, like for important things, or even just when we can to make it happen. At what time would you eat?

Late? That's another Italian thing for sure.

I mean, besides when it got impacted by our schedules and stuff in the US, like I still right now, when I go like, right now, it's 738 and I would not eat probably until like nine,

Veronika Becher 11:10
despite the fact that we're doing this right now. It's just for me, it feels much more natural to eat later at night, because that's just how I grew up. When would you start though your day? Like you mentioned to me once that the way you drink coffee, there was a whole tradition when you drink, what you drink, and your mom was actually also told me about that, and I would love you to talk about that.

Lucas Ciscato 11:37
Well, hopefully I don't misrepresent it too much, but

in Italy, you don't want to. You don't drink like something coffee with any kind of sweetening or milk after 11 ish, 10 ish. So it's like, for example, cappuccino, strictly breakfast. It's not something that you will drink past that time, and it won't even be available in most places in Italy past a certain time, unless it's like Starbucks, of course. But why do you know that?

I think it's just that

my assumption, or what I is that it has to do with just having milk, like sweetened milk, or milk for breakfast, like milk is strictly a breakfast thing. I don't know exactly how to say that. I was thinking, maybe

Veronika Becher 12:33
that's just an assumption. I have no idea what it is, but milk is the fresh it's in the morning,

because really often what do you get in morning is, like, milk, eggs, yeah, so if you have really fresh milk that is not like, maybe go back into and I might be completely wrong what I'm saying, but I can imagine one of the things is, you would like the milk to be fresh When you start, and something lighter, maybe too, yeah, um, and you would just get the fresh milk, it will probably not survive till the end of the day, type of thing, and you would just pour it into your coffee. I have no idea. I'm pretty sure, with Italian culture, Breakfast isn't a big thing, like, it's like a small sweet thing that you might eat, like brioche or like, which is like a croissant, basically, with

something in it with a filling, or something like, we call it also milk bread, yeah? Like,

Lucas Ciscato 13:34
oh yeah, that too, yes, yeah. Just like me pushing, that's the shit. Like, it's a type of bread, milk buns. That's the thing in German, yeah. So it's usually like a smaller thing, and it is strictly sweet.

You don't eat something salty or savory for breakfast, nor do you eat something sweet or something sweet for lunch or dinner. So my cousin, when she came, she was also an exchange student, actually, in the US, and she stayed with us in 2020, 2019, 2020, so COVID. And when we went to like Chick fil A, and she saw that you could eat fries for breakfast or tater tots even, let's be more, let's that's a traditional American thing for breakfast, or at least Southern and she was like that. She was so in awe and confused, or, like, shocked by it, because she's like, how could you eat potatoes with salt for breakfast?

Veronika Becher 14:37
Yeah, I actually love that tradition. I, for some reason, I'm not a sweet morning breakfast person at all, something I've experienced with my partner. It's like, you have this situation when he just loves sweets in the morning and you order this croissant. That's what.

Chocolate, and my options always the ham and cheese one. It's like a really funny thing, maybe, um, but I I just, I don't know something about sweet breakfast is just not my thing,

and I don't crave it as much. And I've been being really bad with like eating breakfast. So I eat apples every single time. If you see me on campus with a random Apple, that's me. I don't see that many people eating random apples or bananas on the street.

Literally, once got a comment. Someone was in an elevator with me, and I entered it, and he looked at me like, I'm crazy, because eating banana. And then after a while, we started laughing. Both we didn't even know each other, and he was like, This is so funny. Like, you're just eating banana in the elevator. I'm like, I don't have time. I'm friendly wait to class. He's like, at least it's healthy.

But yeah, maybe a little fun fact. But coming back, maybe to the story of, like, how you drink coffee and so on. What is your favorite, maybe

brunch, breakfast food that is maybe really Italian,

Lucas Ciscato 16:08
I would say, like something I can specifically remember is sometimes for breakfast we would and I think it's more than nostalgia, also of doing this. But when we were in Italy, we would like walk from the apartment down to a little street shop, I guess you can call it like the main street is there, and then you see, you see a little shop, and you could get, like, different croissants or brioche or things like that. And I would always like, enjoy when we went there, get one with Nutella, because that's also very big thing in Italy, and have a cappuccino with that. So just like

Nutella brioche with a cappuccino,

my dad, actually, my grandpa, worked at a hazelnut,

hazelnut.

How do you call it paste? What is it called in English, spread, hazelnut spread.

In Dutch, it's paste. Anyway,

hazelnut spread company. I don't know if it was Nutella, but basically it was, like its same kind of thing. So I just referred to it as Nutella and my dad or my grandpa would come home with these huge tubs of Nutella every week, and my dad would my dad had so bad teeth after his childhood because he could just eat unlimited Nutella, and that's what he would do for Breakfast. This reminds me of speaking of big sizes,

okay, sure that that was the that was the main topic, was the big size. No, we're not talking about that. We're talking about,

Veronika Becher 17:56
um, a favorite, favorite cheese that is really Italian. But me, John, no, yes,

yes, like my ex boyfriend would say, parmigiano vijano.

And I remember at their like dinner table, they would have this huge block of parmesan just standing, like by itself. I have it in my apartment.

Truly, I remember. I do have it in my apartment. So if you want to ever, you know, be a thief, you know, now, please don't it's so expensive here, it's like $20 for that block of cheese. That's the point. That's the point. That's why you choose wisely, where you try to, like, break inside, but basically this huge block of cheese, and they would just have this block of cheese in the middle of the table by itself, and you would eat it. And you think about it every single time, how many calories it is right now, take into yourself, and then you like, but it's so good, it's freshly made, so

Unknown Speaker 19:07
that's crazy.

Veronika Becher 19:09
So no one questions that

maybe like, so yeah, talking of big sizes, that's

coming back to the topic, or going back going away from the topic. Rather, you can think about other things in life. I'm not going to be the one inspiring you. I just gave you the inspiration.

Um, maybe a different thing. Um,

what language? Like? How do you communicate in your family? That's something that is actually really interesting question.

Lucas Ciscato 19:48
Originally, when we originally, like, when, when we lived in Mexico, slash Hong Kong. It was the most interesting dynamic because it was so.

English at school,

Dutch with my mom,

Italian with my dad, and in Spanish with my brothers.

Speaker 1 20:09
So on a daily in my daily life, I would speak four different languages at all times. This is fantastic. This will be my dream, seriously, knowing so many languages fluently. Oh my gosh. And where are your Chinese skills? Well, I'll tell you. I'll tell you why

Lucas Ciscato 20:28
Chinese never developed in a second. But

with

with that, when we moved to China,

because we weren't in Mexico anymore, we didn't actually continue practicing Spanish, so we lost that out of our like sibling way of communicating, I guess. But the interesting thing about the language dynamic in my family is all of us speak Italian.

My dad speaks Spanish, Italian and English. My mom speaks, at least she won't. This is what she'll claim to speak. Is English, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. She also knows German and some other languages kind of, but she doesn't German. She took four years of in high school, but she doesn't consider that like she actually speaks it, and French is also pretty, like she can understand it and stuff anyway. And then my brothers and I speak Dutch, Italian and English. And then Spanish varies from my little brother hardly speaks it, or, like, doesn't really speak it. And I don't know how well he understands it. He can. I don't know for me, I can understand it if I'm in a conversation and I'm like, listening with context and everything, but I can't really speak it. And then my older brother, he took, I mean, he lived in Mexico for eight years of his life, versus me four years since I was born there.

So he actually, like, can speak Spanish still. So the weird thing about this, the reason why I bring this up, is all of us speak Italian, but for some reason, we developed the

habit of always speaking Dutch in our family,

except for with my dad. So we'll be at the dinner table, and we're like, when we're speaking with each other, like, amongst my mom and my brothers, we're speaking Dutch. And then when we want to address my dad, when we want to include him in the conversation, we'll be like, oh, let's speak Italian for him. And then he'll respond in Italian, and then we'll continue. The conversation in Dutch, and it's like we're excluding him from family conversations, which is kind of sad, and it's it especially is a problem, I guess when, when there's some kind of argument in the family, and we're like arguing in Dutch, and then he thinks he understands what we're talking about, and he'll interject and be like the likes, give his meaning, and we're like that that had nothing to do with what we were just talking about. You got that way off base. He's, or, yeah, basically when, when we have arguments or something, and he's

he is left out in that way, but also when we just have good family

dinners or something, it's kind of sad that we have that habit, and I've been trying to break that, trying to speak as much Italian as possible when he's there. But it's just one of those things where you you're so used to it. It's so natural to me to speak Dutch to my mom and to my brothers that it feels really weird if I try to speak Italian to them.

Veronika Becher 23:52
This is maybe the weirdest question. But if you hypothetically speaking, would have children, what language would you teach them

Lucas Ciscato 24:02
if I had children? That's

actually something I think about, because

I also think like if I have a partner that is also

speaks different languages, right? How? How does that end up working out I would, I think it would be really cool if they could speak Italian and Dutch, at least in English, of course, and then whatever is important to my partner.

Veronika Becher 24:34
But so what I'm hearing is, dear founders of Tinder, please establish a filter option to filter languages that people speak. There you go.

I want, I want to have a partner that speaks only these languages in the future so my children will learn these languages too. Oh my gosh. But I sometimes think about that. My thought sometimes even goes towards if I have.

Want to marry someone, and the person is not from Germany, but my ancestry, and like ancestors, everyone is across the globe, somewhere else, in what language is the wedding is going to be? And then, and then half my family doesn't speak German at all. The other half only speaks German. They don't speak or they speak Russian. But then, can you imagine, like marrying an American, and then the person to speak any of these two languages, and then the other part of my family doesn't speak English, and I'm just saying they're like, oh my gosh, this is the thing that I will never think about.

Speaker 1 25:37
This reminds me how I went on a Polish wedding once, and I had no idea what, like, I don't speak Polish to polish wedding, and because of my Russian roots, I kind of understood half of it. But it was funny. It's like, because only three people in this whole, like, huge wedding could speak English. Were there any like, specific, like, interesting Polish traditions with weddings? Because I know weddings can have some really weird traditions that are like, I was invited to a

Lucas Ciscato 26:07
where was it? I'm

gonna have to look on it, on on the map, but I was invited to a wedding, and the person was hypothetically invited, kind of because it's in Africa,

but the person was like,

You have no idea how intricate our wedding process is, and I'm now very interested in experiencing different culture weddings. So what's the what was the Polish wedding like?

Veronika Becher 26:37
So it was a non 100% traditional wedding. But the way it worked, it was a two days wedding. We they decided to modernize the whole idea, and you have the actual wedding day

that is really traditional religious. You go to a church, you have the whole process, and then people dance, drink, eat certain specific dishes about like meant for it, play games with each other, against each other, compete. It's a fun event. And then the second day, everyone this is so funny to me. Everyone who's so drunk because

it's trying to recover, sober up in the morning. And basically you have this like morning brunch, where people dress up again in a different like style, and you just eat breakfast or brunch with everyone, kind of as part of the family. And that's what I have experienced, um, and it's really common to eat this one soup. I really don't remember the name, but it has sausage in it. What's really crazy? It tastes very good, though, and you just eat all the food that you don't want to go to waste from the day previous day on the next day. Yeah, that's good. I don't know. There are a lot of traditions I feel like

were just not implemented at all. And I know that there, there's going to be probably an episode in the future, like covering weddings in particular, I think that's something that is really interesting and really diverse.

But I, like I said, it's it was not too special, besides all these games where you, like, play against each other and like the husband and wife need to, like, guess, like things that you see even in American culture, the only difference is probably something you see in Slavic cultures. In general, people just dress up really well, and it's like, the higher the high heels, the better. And my highlight of the whole wedding, I should not say that, was probably

that in the bathrooms and the women's bathrooms, you could actually get free tights, because something that happens all the time, if you wear dresses and tights, that tights just break and tear, and then you have a whole hole on your like leg, and you don't want that. So what they did, they provided guests with tights that the within different sizes. So no matter what size you are, you can have a free like free tights that you can switch out of yours were ripped really random thing that's so considerate, though,

and that's how I realized, I think half of the, maybe more than half of the planning went to the wife. The wife was the one thinking, if they're not the husband, I think with much love, but yeah, it was a fantastic evening.

But, yeah, I haven't been to many weddings. I've been to

four, actually, two that I don't remember as well, and two that I remember a little bit better. And the Polish writing to be is one of the most recent ones that I've been to in 2000

Unknown Speaker 30:00
And

Speaker 1 30:01
thing was, sophomore year of culture, actually 2000 what is it? Oh my gosh. I just blank on the year specifically, but, um Yeah, two years ago, unless I'm mis remembering. I think the last wedding to wedding I went to was in 2013

Lucas Ciscato 30:18
So a while ago, and it was in Italy, actually, maybe 2012

Unknown Speaker 30:23

Lucas Ciscato 30:24
and I remember thinking I was literally, I was, like, the best dancer in the world, because they were playing loud music, and I was just dancing my heart out.

Veronika Becher 30:35
I think that's also something that stick with me. But it was, we went, my dad and I, we went to one of his best friends weddings. Because the interesting thing is, um, my my dad is the one who's still in touch with all his college friends, and they, like six guys or something like that, and they all still in touch with each other. And so every single time when we visit in Russia, he like, gathers all the guys together, and that's where I was joke. I'm gonna say that. I'm sorry, dad, but that's where my dad gets into this like, like, he literally, like, as a kid, watching him in that like setup, I realized that he was just a college student that just loved being a college student, and and he gets into his slang words, all the swear words they they drink, they go to the we don't go to sauna. It's like, it's like, Banyan. That's the name of where you have all these like leaves that you snack each other with, literally in this hot, like, hot sauna. It's really funny, and he just gets like, he just transforms into the young child, or like young college student. And so we visited one of his best friends, daughters, actually was getting married, and they invited us. So I would dance with my dad all the time, and my mom would complain, because back in the days, I would, for some reason, only copy my dad, even though my mom would dance more than anyone else that I know, and she's like, why would you dance with the same dance moves as your dad? Don't get me wrong, my dad danced as well. But it's funny. It's like that I, for some reason, decided to ignore it completely my mom half of my life and only focus on my dad's dance moves, and then I just caught like subconsciously copied them so we would dance together all the time. Hilarious, fun fact. But coming back maybe to the actual topic of maybe not weddings and not traveling and speaking languages, but rather, I'm curious, since we're talking about Italy initially,

would you say community plays a big role in Italian culture? And if yes, in what way? I know this is a loaded question, but the answer is definitely yes.

Lucas Ciscato 32:57
I mean, I think

there are distinctions within cultures where you have very individualistic cultures, like American culture, or I'd say Northwestern European culture is often more individualistic,

but Italian is definitely much more of a collective culture where community matters. So you often have like, people will go to the same coffee shop, we'll know the coffee owner, and we'll just sit there and drink coffee for hours and talk to the coffee owner, or talk to family or like, it's much more community based the way society runs in general, and you find that much more in the smaller towns, of course.

But also, when it comes to celebrating holidays or celebrating events, it's often like a big family thing to do, and in Italy, it's, for example, it's common to have, like a big family dinner where

you just keep getting food, like you'll be at a restaurant, and there's a set menu, basically. And they come with appetizers, appetizers number one, and it's like a few different types of cheese and meats and some bread and oil, and you just eat that. And then they come with your first

maybe with a soup, you drink, you eat the soup, maybe with some more bread, or something like that, and then a pasta, and then meat, and then, like, there's just constantly more and more plates coming, and then you end up with your dessert. And like, I think food is a big part of that community aspect is just celebrating and feasting with food. Would you say? Like, that's

Veronika Becher 34:48
the reason why you said for such a long time and restaurant and talk, because there's so many different

steps to finish and get to your dessert? Yes? Yeah, yeah.

Um, what maybe like, speaking of alcohol, I know that's something that people don't really address, but what would you say? How much does wine, in like alcohol play a role in, like, social gatherings?

Lucas Ciscato 35:13
Um, from my understanding, like, yeah, it's a common thing to not necessarily in a party tool, kind of like a party way more of like a

like sit down and maybe look at the stars, or sit in a park, or sit together at a at a table and enjoying a glass of wine. But I'm not necessarily the most, the biggest expert on drinking culture anywhere, because I don't drink. And I was also never an adult in living or in Italy in general.

Veronika Becher 35:48
Are people romantic like, is there a culture like that? I know in France, for instance, you have a lot of like, oh, poetry and like, like, you kind of focus on these things for some reason. But is there something like that in Italy, or something that you would say is very distinctive for specifically Italian culture. I definitely think a lot of art and music will represent, like a very romantic esthetic to it. I don't know exactly how if the people are more

Lucas Ciscato 36:19
focused on the romance aspect of love and things like that, but I do know that it's a lot of things are romance romanticized. And I know we're kind of going through questions, but I'm just curious about different things.

Veronika Becher 36:36
What is your earliest childhood memory that is associated with Italian culture, I'd say eating food with family.

Lucas Ciscato 36:45
We would always go to my

aunt's house to eat some risotto, pumpkin flavored risotto. And then,

Veronika Becher 36:57
can you explain what risotto is for people that never heard of it.

Lucas Ciscato 37:02
It's like a more

water based rice, like it's it's fluffier, and it has more water in it. I don't know exactly how to describe it, besides that, but we would eat that, and then we would have

watermelon for dessert. That was a specific thing too. And in Italy, watermelon is eaten a lot.

Veronika Becher 37:27
That's interesting. I didn't know that is there, like, is there a reason for that?

Lucas Ciscato 37:33
I'm not sure, honestly. I mean, my guess would be that it's something that can be, can be grown easily there. And I'm pretty sure it's

an Italian thing in general, but it could also have just been that my aunt loved watermelon. So I might be like generalizing it when it's just a thing my aunt would do, but that's something I remember, is eating a lot of watermelon.

Veronika Becher 38:03
Do you maybe another thing that comes up when I think of Italy is

the body language part that is part of the whole culture. Is there something specific that you feel like is very prominent about body oh my gosh, body culture is crazy

about the body culture. We are covering random things today. I'm just

Lucas Ciscato 38:29
saying, I mean, I think in general, Italians tend to be much more externally expressive. So whether that is just expressing their emotions more

by expressing their feeling their emotions and showing that being more vulnerable in that sense. But also, they definitely tend to express their emotions with big hand gestures, as you see in movies, or as you would stereotype battalion says. But if you go to Italy and you see like a random guy arguing with the shop owner. Like, you'll see a lot of hand movements, including the classic, like, I don't know what you call this, all your fingers put together, waving your hand up and down,

Veronika Becher 39:14
yes, yes. I'm curious, is there a code to decode someone's body language. So, you know, how can you understand if the person actually is just trying to be enthusiastic about their emotions and in different time with the not happy with you? Is there like a way or I don't think you really need a way to decode it. I think you can see it through facial expressions too, and the tonality of their voice.

Lucas Ciscato 39:46
Yeah, I don't think it's very passive, aggressive or hidden or anything. So you don't need to be very in tune with how someone is physically showing their emotions.

Because you will see it. You will hear it. You will see it.

Veronika Becher 40:04
Is there one thing that you feel like you that shaped you so much regarding Italian traditions that you still keep on doing because of the way you were brought up in a certain like multicultural family, I

Lucas Ciscato 40:21
honestly don't know.

I think because of that multicultural

because I grew up in like that multicultural environment, and never really lived in Italy for that long, it's really hard for me to distinguish what is my family only kind of thing or something that was actually derived from Italian culture. But I'm sure that there is more than I'm aware of that that is tied to Italian culture, that maybe if I were to move to Italy for a year, I'd be like, that's why I'm different in that way, or that's why i That's something that's different between me and my peers here in the US that I didn't realize was Italian. I just thought it was my family, or it was just me. So I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but I would imagine that if I if I was exposed to specifically Italian culture, that there's some things that I would be able to pick out, like, Oh, this is where that comes from.

Veronika Becher 41:27
I would love to kind of maybe, unless there's something that you feel like you would love to share about Italy in Italian culture, I will give you the space. But otherwise, I would love to just ask you a couple of questions about you staying in Hong Kong, and how that ties into your whole trajectory, and why Hong Kong? Why not picking up the language kind of like I think that's a really unique thing to having so many different multicultural backgrounds and realizing so much about culture that most people don't actually even experience. But then, yeah, I'll be just curious about your life in China. So Hong Kong, I lived there for one year, and then moved to mainland China and Shenzhen for and lived there for three years. The reason why we started in Hong Kong is kind of because,

Lucas Ciscato 42:23
at least from my understanding the perception, or like the feeling, of Hong Kong is much more international and has more Western influence because of the British colony, because it used to be a British colony colony, and so my assumption is that My parents probably felt more comfortable living in Hong Kong, but my dad would have to

live or like work in in Shenzhen, in

in China, mainland China, so he would either take a ferry or take the I'm pretty sure there's like, either a bridge or tunnel, probably a tunnel that goes between the Shenzhen in Hong Kong, and he would either have to do that back and forth, or he would stay in Shenzhen for the work week and then come back home. And because that became a little unsustainable, and it was also, I don't know what other factors contributed to it. But because of that, we moved to Shenzhen, because it'd be easier for my dad to just live at home with us and be able to commute that. So that's kind of the story from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, um, and I'm

probably pronouncing that wrong. Sorry for anyone who speaks Mandarin or Chinese or whatever, um, Cantonese,

I tried my best,

but in those places, we mostly so as for the languages, in those places, we mostly lived with international communities. So there's one aspect to where we just had friends from all over the world that were not necessarily Chinese or from Hong Kong.

So that's one thing, but a big part of like having absolutely no Chinese skills is that in when we lived in Hong Kong, in Hong Kong, they speak Cantonese,

and apparently my parents started taking some courses and stuff, and I would also learn a little bit at school. But then when we moved to Shenzhen, where they speak Mandarin, that shift was confusing, and it just kind of set everything back. And it was like, well, we're probably not going to stay here forever, so my parents just kind of learned how to get by and tell a taxi driver, like, oh, let's go left, right, forward, take us to Walmart, things like that.

Veronika Becher 44:52
Did you? Did you take classes while being there? Like, how old were you? I was.

Lucas Ciscato 45:00
Between the ages of five and eight

in China, four and eight like in Hong Kong and China.

And so I started in like, preschool, I think, in Hong Kong, and then in kindergarten in China, first grade and second grade those. That's what I did in in China, and it was at international schools. So it was American, um, curriculum

in an international school there, and it was filled with students from all over the world. So we had some Italian friends. We had some, yeah, friends from all over and

my

in in my school, we did have like they wanted to incorporate some Chinese culture and stuff to teach you about where you are, but because of my hearing loss and I had some developmental setbacks because we found out that I was basically deaf

when I was four, which is like a pretty late time to figure that out, especially when you're

supposed to be able to speak and and listen and talk much more at that age. So it kind of set back my development in speech, and also i In addition to that, I spoke multiple languages, so that also kind of confuses things with with speech. So what I did, instead of going to Chinese lessons in that school, I would be held in with my language arts teacher, and focus on reading and writing in English, so I kind of lost that aspect of like the cultural integration that the school was trying to provide.

I will love I love these points, and I really want to tell the the listeners this fun fact that you told me the other day, or what you did in China, you would like to share it or not? Okay, well, let me set up the story in a way, way that I remember it that kind of sounds like my parents were not very careful or cared or, I don't know what the word is for that, but oh my gosh, they will listen to this and then tell me that it's completely different, and that I am probably misconstruing the story, and that they definitely are good parents, but basically, from, if I remember this correctly, they told they we were

walking down the street or something,

and like this random model scout was like,

your, my gosh, your two kids

look like they could model for us.

And would you be interested? This is how all the horror movies

completely wrong, because I know my parents would not randomly trust some stranger on the street. Photos of your little kid that is four years old,

but that's how I remember it, and I would just basically Okay, so I didn't even say what I did. I My first job was being a child model, and my little brother too. Oh my gosh. How old was your little brother at the time? Do you know that three or something? So I was probably like five or six when, because I didn't start immediately when I moved there. So I was probably like five or six, and he was probably three or four. Lucas, what happened to your model career? You could have been now on the rent? Yes, yeah. Well, it did me very well. It funded a lot of my travels. This these past few years. The all the money I saved up from modeling in China is what funded a lot of my travels. So if you look at my Instagram and you think, Oh, my God, how does this kid, this person, have so much money? Do his parents pay for everything? No, I was just a very successful child model. Oh my gosh, this reminds me. I have a really close friend, cargo. She went to China for a dual degree, and she was telling me in just to explain how she looks like she has fair skin. She's European, right?

Veronika Becher 49:26
Slim, not in that way. She looks really beautiful, but she's like the ideal Asian, like European standard. And she was walking around on the the Great Wall. What's the is that the name The Great Wall of China? Yeah, exactly, taking photos. And she was laughing how people were not taking photos of the Great Wall, they were taking photos of her. And she was like, this was the weirdest thing ever, that people were taking photos of me rather than of the wall itself, because I was more famous than the wall,

and they.

Then ask her if it's okay to take the photos. They just took photos of her. So

I'm just saying for everyone who's going to Japan this year, because we have a trip coming up, not us, but for other people, watch Yes, watch out. Don't take you know, don't get carried away. Or if you're really poor, get a modeling job. Yes, it's an option in in China,

Lucas Ciscato 50:32
but yeah, I, I hated doing modeling too.

Not that anything weird happened, but just the idea of, like, changing in and out of clothes was, like, I did not like that, but the part that really that kept me, that kept me through it, was they had American snacks, they had Oreos, they had Cheez Its. They are not Cheez Its, but goldfish. They had things like that. And

that really,

like, that really got me like, I was like, I need this. And I so I would keep going. Sometimes, yeah, I don't know, it's just it wasn't my favorite thing in the moment. But now that I got to, even though I kind of used up the money at this point, now that I got to use that money to travel, I'm really happy that I did it.

Veronika Becher 51:25
Is there one last thing maybe you feel like that you would love to mention about China and your life there that you feel like shaped something about your identity, or even it's just a fun fact that you remember,

Lucas Ciscato 51:45
I'll just, I'll go with something deeper out of it, but not go too far into it.

For me, in China, I was, we had, like, a community of friends from different countries and everything, and I got really close to them and really close to living like, I really enjoyed living there, and so when we moved out of there, that was, like, really stressful and difficult for me, like I was very angry and upset and

in in despair, basically, because of the move,

Speaker 1 52:25
would you say that shaped you in such a way that it even affects you right now, how you bond with people? Definitely, I think it, it has become really difficult for me to

Lucas Ciscato 52:39
trust the fact that if I form a closer bond, that it can, that it will last, that there's not something that will interfere with that. And so it's hard for me to actually like I really want to have deep connections with people, because that's something that I like, I really enjoy, and I love hearing someone's like deep personal stories and understanding their perspective on life, but it's really hard for me to show any vulnerability and to become attached, because if I allow myself to do that, if I don't Keep my own my distance, then if,

if they disappear, quote, unquote, disappear on me. If they

are ripped away from my life, then I lose them. And that's really

painful.

So instead, it's easier to

for me to kind of keep myself at a stay like be independent and experience that loneliness intentionally, then have it happen unintentionally.

Veronika Becher 53:53
Do you feel lonely really often because of this missing connection with people and moving around so much? I mean, I think it's important to

Lucas Ciscato 54:05
work on it, my work on myself that I can I can be independent to where, if something does happen, I'm still okay, like I'm still myself, and I can still be okay. So not create a codependency with someone to where,

if they

are, if something happens, where the relationship is not able to continue, that I don't have that codependency and that I can still feel okay. But I also think I need to work within a relationship in order to build a build trust, and being being able to have a good like

balance of showing that vulnerability and and having that connection

with

the fact that I also need to be able to be in the pen.

And

Veronika Becher 55:01
be okay by my own, on my own, I feel like it's such a deep question in the conversation that you could even continue for another hour and go completely into all attachment styles and how people view each other and find relationships. Do you have any last points that you feel like you just would love to mention about your experience, about finding friends and maybe fighting loneliness,

even though we barely scratched the surface.

Lucas Ciscato 55:36
I mean, fighting loneliness is something I'm still working on, so I'd say

I don't know if I have any words about that, because it's something that I'm actively working on,

as for

finding friends. What? What? What can you elaborate on what you're asking for,

Veronika Becher 56:07
if you're coming from a background where you are exposed to so many cultures and it's difficult to adapt, is there a certain or maybe advice you would give someone based on your experience of living in so many different cultures, how to connect with people that completely are coming from different backgrounds. I think, from my experience, the

Lucas Ciscato 56:30
best way to connect to people is just be yourself and

be make sure that you lead with the best intentions, and people can often read that and understand that even if there's

mis attunement because of cultural differences, that if they see the real you and your rightful intentions, that they can look past that and understand that it comes out of the cultural disparities, rather than the your intention, rather than you as what you're, what you and what you do, or what you might have said, or something like that. And I would say that one of the biggest things I've learned traveling and living all over the world is while there are cultural differences, people are people, people are the same,

we all have a desire to love and be loved and for connection, and Even if there are cultural things that we might have learned or

stereotypes that might interfere with that, in the end, it's possible to break those stereotypes and to break that cultural disconnect between different cultures

and

fulfill each other's need for love and connection.

Veronika Becher 58:06
So what I'm hearing is also don't give up, even if you feel like you are between cultures and it's difficult to connect with someone you like. I think the best way is to share your own stories, to share your own experiences, to actually have this direct intercourse with people, to talk about these things, communicate and understand where you're coming from, what is the person feeling? What maybe even adopting certain traditions, because, you know, it's not like because you're Italian, you only stick to these traditions because you're Dutch, you only have to follow this rule, and one last thing is listen, make sure to genuinely listen to what another person is saying,

Lucas Ciscato 58:53
because often we just hear to be able to then respond and give our input or our story, instead of listening to what the other person says and

then understanding the

the impact that their story has on their life and on their perspective on Life, because then you can see you have a slightly better chance of seeing the world through their perspective. I actually recently retold what you said when we had the field trip to neighbor to neighbor, which is that

you'll never be able to fully see or understand someone's perspective on life and their story and what they've been through. But the more you listen and the more you you have those conversations, the closer you get to the real picture.

Veronika Becher 59:55
And the real picture is to just give the maybe last story of.

This whole podcast episode is when you sketch so one person's holding a book. That was what I was talking about, and it's an exercise we did this organization called neighbor to neighbor. Whoever wants to volunteer, feel free. It's a wonderful place with so many really heartwarming people. And it's this community where we work or we mentor different kids like that are mostly high schoolers, but also their middle school kids too and much younger kids. And it's we had to describe a cover, a book cover, to another person, and you can't see what the other person is sketching, but also you're facing each other's backs so you don't actually see each other at all. You can only listen. And one thing that our instructor told us, and that just stuck with me, and I will, I just love to share it, and that was what I did with other other students, is when you compare the picture and the actual cover, you realize that through good communication and listening skills, you get closer and closer to the actual picture, but you will never, ever completely have a replication of what you actually see on the cover. And the cover represents who we are and how we perceive each other and how we live in our little like box, but the picture that we are drawing is how others perceive us and how you're trying to understand and a good leader and something that you could pick up. And I'm really surprised that you actually retold the story I feel really honored about that is through listening and trying to understand, you get closer and closer to the real you that is sitting in this box, the actual book cover, but you would never actually be completely like it's not always the same. It's only getting closer, and that means you need to work and build trust honest, through honesty and through compassion, and work towards what you want to achieve

and understand the other person.

But, yeah, I that's a really nice actually, um, closing story. I really appreciate bringing it up. Um, I think it's something that makes me think all the time about this. Just visit this oh my gosh, visualization, oh my gosh. Um,

and um, Lucas, I'm just so so happy that you're on my podcast that you continuously like spontaneously, continuously crazy, crazy phrases here, um, come to my studio and record these episodes of me share parts of your life. I think that's a really brave thing to do. A lot of people that I talk to, they like I would never be in your podcast because so many people listen to it, but I think it has a greater purpose than being scared of sharing what is actually who you actually are as a person. And I said, I'm super grateful for your time. Um, do you have something you last thing, or anything you want to say to our dear listeners? I I'll say this because it connects to what I said earlier, and I um,

Lucas Ciscato 1:03:14
Dr Odom said this recently in one of our seminar classes for Caldwell fellows. But we are human beings, not human doings, so just be yourself.

Veronika Becher 1:03:28
Just be yourself. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you so much, Lucas for being on my podcast and see you next time bye, bye. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai