questo e lo

This is for real my last entry for my study abroad blog and this one is more for me to help me remember how I felt after all this.

So my feelings on Italy and Italian people, my views on both were switching constantly based on everyday interactions I was having. At first and even now I am not a huge fan of Italian people, they have a HORRIBLE staring problem and I mean horrible they have no problem starring you down for awkwardly long periods of time. The women especially are not friendly to each other especially to non-Italians while I was there I did not make one Italian female friend that was under 40 years old. I guess it is part of their culture and someone told me that they stare from the shoes up and if your shoes aren’t good enough they don’t continue looking. Another problem I had with Italians is they are very cold people but I feel like a lot of them are this way with everybody and it takes a lot for a person to build your trust for them to really open up to you. The comradery between guys there though is really cute, guy friends are very affectionate towards each other which would not be as excepted in the US and they are not afraid to tell people how much they like their friend haha hope that made sense.

Obviously they have an amazing culture and every city within Italy that I visited was beautiful and all very different from one another. The saying that Italians talk with their hands is SO true even Edoardo gets his daily exercise in by all the motions and hand gestures he uses. It was funny to see people drive and talk and still using their hand gestures. Italians also like to sit in their car when I would walk around in residential neighborhoods people were always sitting in their cars on the computer, on the phone, sleeping it was like their second living space. Italians also do not believe in picking up their dogs poop, Rome always has a faint smell of dog waste that is disgusting and it is so bad in the residential areas, I know a few people who have lost a pair of shoes to this problem. None the less Italians love their dogs, Edoardo’s mom told me people show off their dogs, the breed can be a social status indicator.

Italian fashion…definitely questionable I thought I was going to be in the center of it all but Rome certainly did not reach my expectation. The hot thing in Rome this winter was big puffy purple jackets with furr on the hood. They also declare a color of the year/season and this year it was purple. In other cities like Milan and Florence the style got better but I found for the most part Italian women clothes to be tacky, cheap, and unflattering.
Ok enough bashing on the Italians I did meet some really cool people and my favorite thing is the old Italian stroll. Throughout the day old people in Rome take strolls around their city and piazzas and I have grown to love the idea of walking everywhere (mostly because I had to).

I think Rome was an amazing place to study abroad, there is so much to see and do in that city that one could never conquer it in a weekend or week visit. There are a ton of things and places I didn’t get a chance to see but it is a great excuse for me to go back. I don’t think I could ever live in Italy for an extended period of time, their everyday actions are very aggressive and angry which is not at all like the California vibe that I like / need. I would constantly find myself mad at stuff I would never get mad because other people were and my patience shrunk. The time that I was there was enough for me to embrace the people and the culture and succeed in fitting in but after the stress of my finals I was ready to go home.

I think studying abroad is an amazing experience because you really do learn a lot about yourself and your limits with people, culture, and traveling. Moving somewhere you have never been before where they speak a language you barley know is an accomplishment in its own but those two elements ended up being the less challenging things I had to deal with.

Pensieri finali

Well even though I have left Italy I still want to make some comments about my full time abroad. I have about 7 or so hours in layovers in London and Chicago so I thought this would be a perfect time to recap.

I will start with the outcome of my projects, last Monday I had to say goodbye to my little friend Edoardo, who I tutored 2 days a week. We definitely had our ups and downs, our good days and our bad days but none the less I am still going to miss the little rascal. He (indirectly) taught me the most Italian, especially how to use commands haha. I am pretty sure he taught me more Italian than I taught him English the best thing he learned were the lyrics and some dance moves to “Everybody Dance Now,” when he sings that part that was the closest to a sentence and as a very proud moment for me and his parents.

(my favorite italiano Edo)

Throughout the semester I continued my service work at the refugee center. I got to know a lot of the regulars pretty well and this experience taught me more about the world, politics, economics, than any class I have ever taken. I still can’t get over how smart these guys are and how unfortunate their situation is. The combination of Edoardo’s English lessons and giving English lessons at the center, I think my English has improved more so than my Italian. I am disappointed on how little I improved in Italian. I think the biggest problem was my school is an American school, so everybody speaks English and a lot of Italians know or are trying to learn English so they always insist on speaking to me in English. So by being here my English got better, my Spanish got worse, and my Italian may have improved slightly. I still really want to pursue the language, it is a fun language, filled with a lot of fun expressions, but I just need to build up my vocabulary.

(The classroom within the center)

The documentary that I was working on is for the most part complete, I completed it enough to have a screening of it at my school during finals week. Films are never really finished though I could tweek with that thing until I die but the screening went really well, there were over 150 students and staff that came and I got a lot of really good feedback on it which was nice. The film title is ‘Nice Country’ and is based on an immigrant and a refugee that come to Italy to find a better life.