This city is
a porticoed, often eerie and shadowy medieval place,
the setting of many Italian mystery novels and even a John Grisham thriller. As
a college student spending part of my junior year abroad, I havent always
felt completely safe here. But then came news of the
sexual assault and killing of a British student, Meredith Kercher,
in
Every day brings
a new headline or television report about Amanda Knox. "Man-hunter,
insatiable in bed," was the first line in an article in Corriere della Sera,
Not only is
Perugia, like Bologna, a university city that is considered one of the premier
places for language and culture study abroad, but Amanda is a girl my exact
age, 20, from my hometown, Seattle. Because of her story, which has dominated
the news in
I came here
imagining Id have to answer the numerous questions about the war, our
unpopular president and our cultural exports that still dominate Italian
television. Italians love to argue. And while I have had many
late-night discussions about
A few days after
the Nov. 1 murder, Corriere della Sera ran a story
about
I love my
hometown. My tiny room here, which I am told was once part of the former servants quarters of a wealthy
These
dont
get much reaction....
Since this
murder, to be a college student from
And of course
there was that unfortunate online name she gave herself: "Foxyknoxy."
So these days I
am not exactly shouting the name of my hometown to bystanders in the piazza.
"Youre from
American
college students already have to live down a stereotype of their own making. Hordes of them
drunkenly parade " or literally pub crawl "
past Renaissance masterpieces on the streets of
Its bad
enough that the dollar is at a record low and that President Bush is about as
popular here as Chinese food. Not to mention, Im always trying to explain
that "The O.C." isnt real life
and thats not how most people in the
Now throw in
the blue-eyed studentessa, a poster girl for college
debauchery.
To read the articles about Amanda Knox, you would think that all American
students are hash-smoking party girls with little memory of their weekends.
This makes the
foreign immersion process so much more difficult. We college students come here
to learn Italian, study new things, live on our own outside the American
cocoon, experience the culture and form relationships with the people and the
country. And
So, I havent
given up. This country has far too much to offer for me to let an incident like
this tarnish my experience. Sure, answering the question "Where are you
from?" is a bit more awkward, but it certainly gets the conversations
going. And after all, that is what I came here to do.