GL350 Blog Week 1

As of today, we have been in Italy for five days. I have never left the country before so coming here is a huge change. It really opened my eyes as to how other people live their every day lives. A change that I have slowly been adjusting to is the times that we eat meals here. In the U.S., I am used to eating all throughout the day then having dinner around 6 PM. In Italy, we eat breakfast at 8 AM, lunch around noon, and dinner at 8 PM. It's also different because we have to get water from a well outside instead of straight from the sink. 

In class, we are reading a book called The Italians by Luigi Barzini. He talks about how Italians love family time. When it comes to dinner, they all sit down together to share the meal. On campus, we all sit down together and mimic this tradition. Going along with the family time, in Italy the houses are also different than the U.S. because in Italy the bedrooms are very small because they spend most the their time in a huge common area with family. This is just how our campus is set up.

This week, we read the first two chapters and he made a few interesting points. In chapter one, he talks about the Italians and says how they are very attractive and today, they are considered more attractive than the Italians from the past and more beautiful than the previous art work of beautiful people. This really stood out to me because in my opinion, I do not think the Italian are all that great. I feel as though Barzini set the pedestal very high by his description that in reality, they are really nothing special. I also believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that as an American, what I am exposed to compared to what Barzini was exposed to, we probably have a very different opinion on what is considered beautiful. 

Today, after we had our class tour of the Baths of Caracalla, we all went our separate ways to explore the city of Rome. My friends and I got our map out and managed to find our way to the Trevi Fountain. Afterwards, we did a lot of shopping on the main roads. One of my friends was looking for a store and we were running around everywhere and it was about time to start heading back. We were determined to find this store since we had been looking for so long. I saw a girl around our age carrying a bag from the store we were looking for. I approached her and asked where the store was, but she did not speak a word of English so I tried to ask her in Italian by saying "Dove!" then pointed to the bag. We ended up finding the store right away. My little story ties in with Barzini because he mentioned how Italians like it when you try to speak their language.

So far I think that this week has been successful and I am excited for our future adventures!