Italian Life

For this post I am going to talk some about the Italian lifestyle (or at least what I have observed so far) and my homestay here. I'm also inevitably going to talk about some other stuff that has happened to me as well.

My family lives within a few blocks of the stadium where Fiorentina play. On game days the streets around here get pretty crazy. The difference between American stadiums and stadiums like the one in which Fiorentina play is that here the stadiums are part of the neighborhood. As such, there is no giant parking complex and hence on game days the streets are inundated with cars. You can see our apartment on Google Maps (Street View is even available so you can poke around the neighborhood. Check it out here.). It's about a 20 minute walk from my house to the SU campus in Piazza Savonarola, but there are two buses a block from where I live that take me straight there. The buses are extremely easy here, and everybody uses them, rich and poor. It's nice to be able to just hop on and in 5 minutes be where I want to be, no problems.

I don't think people in Italy wear shorts. Granted it's winter right now, but I still think that it's true. I don't feel like I should wear shorts inside, and I don't have any sweatpants, so my comfiest clothes are jeans.

Now that that thought is over with, I'll talk a little more about my Italian family. Daniela is 52 and too sweet. She is always going out of her way to make sure that I have everything I need. Sometimes it's difficult, because when she asks if I like something I can't say no (not in fear of being rude, but because everything is good), but if I say yes she will cook/buy/feed me more of it. But she is always looking out for me. She'll never let me help clean up, either, and cleans my bathroom, bedroom, and laundry once a week. Paolo is 16 and he's a good boy too. He speaks some English, but not as much as his mother; she often helps translate between us until my Italian gets better. He's a teenager so he's a little crazy, but he has a good character. He also is always making sure that I am okay. Him and his mother fight a lot, but I can tell he is self-conscious because in the middle of an argument he will stop and apologize to me.

Part of their fighting is due simply to the Italian culture, in which people wear their emotions on their sleeves. They are very loud and engaged when they argue, but it's not a big deal to them. In America if two people argued like that, it would likely be the end of their friendship. But here it is an everyday occurrence.

I will end this post here because we are sitting down to eat dinner soon. As far as I can tell we are having whole fish. Heads, scales, everything. And pasta. And potatoes. They'll probably make me drink wine, too.