This whole experience, thus far, has been quite an adventure.
I don't think I've been here long enough to manage through my thoughts and what I've been learning, because I haven't really processed it all quite yet. I had my "Living Italy" class, which is a class in which we'll be learning about the culture of Italy and touching on many areas such as government, music, cinema, culture differences and similarities, etc.
The first day was yesterday, and he asked us, "How do you feel so far?" And we just had to write down how we feel so far as visitors. And while I was thinking about it, it really did hit me that we are just visitors. Yeah, we're staying here for four months, but on the other hand, we're staying here for four months. There are people who work for the CEA program who have lived here for 10+ years and are still learning all the time. It's hard to get out of the American mindset that we know everything, because whether we like to admit it or not, we do think that way. We think that everyone is like us if they have similar foods, or look like us, or have families like us. Wrong! The culture here is so different than I ever would have expected. I'm not sure if I can explain how or why quite yet, but it just is. The past two weeks have just been up and down with everyone trying to compromise with one another and learn about each other, while still keeping in mind that we are visitors in a foreign country and can't just do what we want. Things don't fly here the way they do in the United States. And as I've observed, some people have a hard time accepting that.
It's all very fascinating and I love it. It's not hard to get used to life over here because the Romans really know how to do it and, in the words of Tim Gunn, (whose twin I saw the other day), "...Make it work."
