On one of our walks Owen and I had an in-depth conversation about happiness. As a psych major he’s familiar with a study that I’ll only briefly summarize here. Essentially it showed that when rats were alone in a cage they used heroine-infused water until they died but that rats who were in a happy social cage (the “rat park”) used the heroine water less than normal water.

This is a strange way to start a blog post, I know, but it’s both an incredibly interesting study and relevant to traveling. (It is going to lead into a more introspective post, however, so if you want a daily update about the things I’m doing, feel free to skip this one).The conclusion of this study – or at least the conclusion that some psychologist drew in the article Owen read – was that addiction was less of a chemical reaction and more related to what was absent in an individual’s life. (Obviously this is very condensed, but the general gist is the same). Personally, I think there should be more focus on creating our own social “rat parks” in the states.

From my (limited) time abroad, it seems as though this is one of the things Italians do right. There is more focus on the family and on positive social encounters than on many of the things we value in the states – money, success, etc. Again this is based on very little experience and probably includes a lot of generalizations, but of the Europeans I’ve met with both here and traveling abroad, this has been the case.

One way that this can be seen in Italy is with the difference in what they do at night. Americans (here and in the states) do a lot of binge drinking, drinking to get drunk and only partially because it’s social. In Florence, it’s obvious who’s local and who isn’t because the locals don’t drink to get drunk. They don’t go to the electronic disco clubs that a lot of study abroad students go to and they don’t drink hard alcohol. Alcohol is a part of the culture and the life here and their way of drinking with meals might lead to an overall greater consumption of alcohol, but the purpose is different and, personally, I like it a lot better.

Another reason rat park is relevant to my time here is that I’ve been lucky enough to come to Florence with two of my closest friends, one of whom is also my host brother. Unlike many people who have to reinvent themselves abroad and struggle to find new friends (in Florence I can see how this would be particularly difficult because of the huge percentage of Syracuse University students who already have established friend groups) I’ve brought a mini rat park with me. Having Owen in my house has made everything more enjoyable. I feel safe going out at night because I never have to walk home alone (don’t get me wrong, we might still get mugged, but at least we’ll get mugged together, which is something, right? – also, yes, yes we’re being safe) and I always have someone to talk to or go out with.

When I first came to college, I started to realize the value of really good friends and just how important it was to have them. The more I travel and the more I adapt to living in new situations the more I realize how true that is. I’ve adjusted to a fair number of new living environments over the past couple years – New York City and St. Eustatius being the main ones that come to mind – bur I don’t think it was until I had what I needed that I realized how much I was missing it on other trips.

In NYC I was busy enough that it didn’t matter too much, though I began to realize toward the end of the semester how much having intern friends improved my experience. But St. Eustatius is the experience I would really do differently. I went into that experience with only personal goals in mind. I was focused on my work, on exercise, on writing – all good things, to be sure – but what I didn’t put much effort into was building my rat park. If I was going to do it all over again I’d put more effort into the social aspects as well.

Honestly – and I hope people challenge me on this if/when they disagree – I think the American education system (middle and high school predominately) is not consistent with building and maintaining a rat park. One of my friends went to an alternative high school that was focused on fostering positive social interactions and learning together instead of the competitive atmosphere that I was taught in where kids have little or no incentive to work together on anything.

I was lucky enough to have a rat park at home and through athletics, but I think there are a lot of kids who don’t have that growing up. In college I was away from my family and not playing volleyball, which is how I started to learn the importance of building a friend rat park. I’m not sure what the real world will be like, though I’m worried it’s more like high school in the competitive sense, but regardless, I feel insanely lucky to have my friends with me and not have to worry about that here. Having some of my friends with me and a wonderful host family has enabled me to focus on other things, like exploring a new city and really getting into my time abroad.