Friday,
September 29, 2006
Americans Both Awkward with, and Embrace
Italian Life Style
The ANNOTICO
Report
In
Graphic
By
Anna King
September
29, 2006
Our first
two weeks in
We go out
and try to order our panino sandwiches in Italian,
but the lady at the counter simply asks, Which
one?
Hopefully, by the
end of my time here I will be able to pass as a blonde Italian, but I feel that
there is more than just a language barrier getting in the way of adjusting to
our new life here. The problem is the fact that we are citizens of the
At all
hours of the day here, as it is in the states, there are people out and about,
but I am not entirely convinced they are actually going anywhere. They are
walking down the streets talking with friends, or riding their scooters across
town or browsing through stores not looking for anything in particular. We try to
live that way, but it seems our roots always get in the way.
Yes, we
walk and talk with purpose because we are young, multi-tasking Americans. But
we get there, and that is all. When we go out, even when we have nothing to do,
we do not waltz down the street we
power walk.
I have
found that this show of fast-paced living makes us recognizable as foreigners.
It is not the flip-flops and it is not our tendencies to be loud. It is the
fact that we do not really look around.
We do not
have a conversation with someone on the street. We do not stop at a cafe on the
way to someplace and simply order a cappuccino and actually sit and drink it.
Italians
take things slow they wander, they
spend hours at a table talking about their family and their church, they ride bikes instead of driving cars. They do not really
have a schedule, except for their scheduled breaks. This is especially hard for
us to comprehend.
As a group
of us were relaxing in the student center one afternoon, a student professed to
us that he was going to live in
They
take a two-hour nap in the middle of the day, every day, and have more national
holidays than they can remember. What more could you want? he asked us.
He was
commenting on the fact that he went out to lunch and everything was closed, but
in essence he was frustrated with the fact that he wanted something then and
there and could not get it.
So many
things in
There are
no Targets to go to when we need toothpaste and crackers and a shirt, but there
are pharmacies and grocery stores and clothing stores. The inconvenience of
that bothers us.
We, as
Italians,
however, live in a simpler, more relaxed manner. People drive small cars really small cars and park them wherever.
Nobody
cares. Red lights are more like an option than a requirement. Sidewalks are
small, roads are uneven, stores are unorganized and
unaesthetic. Things are straight and to the point. You get done what you need
to do and you go back to what you really care about.
And Italians care
about a lot of different things. They care about their families and their
soccer games and their boyfriends and girlfriends. They take pride in those
things, and they spend a lot of time devoting themselves to them. All of the
other stuff, the working and the grocery shopping and the being wherever you
need to be right now, does not matter. Here, what matters is what you learn
about each other and what you experience on the way there.
The
ANNOTICO Reports
Can
be Viewed, and are Archived at:
Italia
Italia Mia: http://www.ItaliaMia.com
Annotico
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