My Trip to Italy
I stood in the town square of the small village. Like any other normal day, people were going about their day-to-day business. Old men sat on a wooden bench beneath a large tree and predicted this year’s crop. Women shared town gossip as they shopped for groceries, and children sucked on lollipops while they played along the cobblestone streets. However, unlike any other day, the whole crowd had stopped in unison and darted their eyes in my direction, their full attention on me. I heard hushed whispers as I passed by the crowd, “Americano!” “Oh mio Dio, guarda com’è alto!” I lowered my head as I thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing here? I’m in a country where I don’t know the language or the culture, and I
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Living in a town of 1,800 Italians was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. The first months were extremely trying; I didn’t speak any Italian, and everyday things that I took for granted back home suddenly became a struggle. The most obvious of the differences between the two cultures was the language. I quickly picked up a few key-words like “My name is,” and “I like,” and I had all the cuss words mastered within the first few weeks. However, I had the vocabulary of a 5-year-old and the mind of a 17-year-old and I was going insane! My host family was very hospitable but also very serious and meticulous. They liked things put in their place and wanted them to stay that way. I had to put all my clothes away neatly in my closet, make my bed every morning, and turn the computer and lights off after I used them.
It wasn’t all bad, and perhaps the best part about living in a small town is the close, community atmosphere. Many of the townspeople were related, and their families had grown up together, passing on stories and traditions. It also wasn’t uncommon for people to acknowledge each other when they walked through the streets. It was a shock for me, coming from Wilmington, Delaware, where you don’t look someone in the eye, let alone mutter a “Hello.” Everyone went out of their way to make me feel at home. I became a “celebrity” in the town where I lived and in the other
Growing up I lived in the small town of Duncan, Oklahoma; although, not nearly as small as the town I currently reside in. Throughout my adolescence, I attended Mark Twain Elementary School and as I was ending the third grade, my parents decided that we should move to Fox, Oklahoma to be closer to my grandparents. Moving would bring big changes my way such as a smaller school, living in the middle of nowhere, and new ways of entertainment. Living in the country has its pros and cons, but I can tell you the only thing I could think of the night we moved out there was the cons. Eventually, I had grown accustomed to the silence, lack of traffic, and having nothing to do. Looking back I feel that if we had not moved to the country then I would
“The Little Heidelberg” is the story of a small dance hall. The customers of The Little Heidelberg are typically older men and women, many of whom are foreigners who cannot speak English. One of these is El Capitán, a retired Finnish sea captain, who has been dancing with niña Eloísa, a lovely Russian woman, weekly for forty years. They have never spoken to each other because of language barriers. One day some Scandinavian tourists come to
The author creates a mood of being irritating by her “…awful grandmother…” and brothers “…Alfredito and Enrique…” who are occupied playing outside as “… a B-Fifty-two bomber…” [paragraph 5] and her grandmother with a “… long, long list of relatives … names of the dead and the living into one long prayer…” [paragraph 10]. Including, the imagery provided in the short story described the character’s actions by watching her grandmother pray while she counts her grandmother’s mustache hairs. Later, an unknown lady and man start talking to her brother asking if she could take a picture, than judging by their looks, they assume they do not speak English but only
Unfortunately I see this conversation ending with Celeste and Jim both very upset and no solutions to the conflict being discussed. It seems that at the end of this scenario the conflict was beginning to spiral out of control, and communication was shutting down. It will end with Celeste and Jim blowing up at each other and not being willing to understand the others perspective about the situation. They will not talk for a while after this happens and Jim will hire Nikki as he intended to from the beginning. As a negative end to this conflict I see Jim and Celeste looking back over the conflict still trying to defend their position (retrospective goals).
Since my mother had lived in Italy for 16 years and had mostly assimilated, I can say that my life at home to this day has been pretty much Italian. My mom cooks Italian meals every night and my parents talk in Italian and my father exclusively watches Italian TV and for the most part listens to only Italian music. My life outside of my home has been very much American. I assimilated to the American culture pretty quickly. I obviously spoke english outside of my house and made many American friends from whom I picked up a lot. Every year I could feel that I was losing my Italian culture. I could especially feel it during my trips to Italy. When I travel to Italy, I feel my whole world changing pretty much overnight. Everything is different; the environment, the people, the sounds, the smells, and the feel of everything. Because of the vast differences I feel when I travel to Italy, it augments my feeling that I’ve lost a big part of me.
In the memoir ‘Pointing North’, Paolo Totaro finds that despite having barely any memories of Italy and having spent most of her life in Australia, “fitting in” is not easy. Paolo Totaro pointed out that many of her hardships originated in the schoolyard – “They too figured it was too hard to pronounce, so Greasy Wog became my moniker.” She noticed that throughout her child, many people overlooked her feelings and simply labelled her as a “hysterical Italian”. Paolo stated that she doesn’t “remember any other non-Aussie kids at school” and wondered whether she would have felt as if she belonged if she were not the only foreigner. She found that as others treated her as an outsider, she clung
It began to get dark and the sun was beginning to fall so I headed
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Italy is an European country. Italian is its official language, and 93% of the population is native Italian speakers. Its ethnic background includes small clusters of German-Italians, French-Italians, Slovene-Italians, Albanian-Italians, and Greek-Italians. With various clusters of people come various beliefs in religion. Religion has influenced the culture, artists, and national treasures of Italy in various ways.
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