a blog about cultural differences

Lodovico Ariosto, the namesake for Piazza Ariostea

Maria arrived home (finally) on Monday afternoon after spending a month in Greece. The first comment she made was that I had gotten skinnier, and I explained it was because she wasn’t around for a month to cook for me. I finished laundry on Monday night and slowly started to pack away all of my things. On Tuesday, I went to the center in the afternoon to take some pictures and say goodbye to my program directors and the two lovely owners of Caffetteria Spisani. I had plans later to meet Vassilis in Piazza Ariostea, and wanted to go home to shower and change first, but we ended up running into each other in the center right as I was about to head home (I think we were both really surprised that this happened). This was nice though, because we were able to spend another hour together before I had to go to my last aquagym class. He also gave me a really cute necklace so I would have something to remember him by.

When Wednesday arrived it seemed surreal. I was ready to go home and see my family, but I wasn’t ready to leave what had become my other family and my friends behind. Between periods of semi-productivity during which I was cleaning my room and trying to fit everything into my suitcase, I went to the store and picked up two large things of Nescafe (the instant coffee you mix with milk that I had practically every morning in Ferrara) and some peperoncino. Then a Greek mother and daughter who were traveling Italy (Maria had met them on her return boat from Greece) came over to our apartment for lunch. I was finally all packed and ready to go around 3pm. Luciana drove me to the station and I convinced her to ride down to Bologna with me to see me off. Once I got to the airport, I had to pay 50 euros extra because I checked two bags (thankfully they ignored the fact that one of them was significantly overweight) and said goodbye to Luciana.

I made it through security, but customs was another story. I went up to the window and handed the man behind the counter my passport. He looked at it for what seemed like forever, and then looked at me and said “è scaduto” (this means it’s expired–he was talking about my visa.) Sadly, this was true–my visa was only supposed to be valid until May 31, 2009, but my program directors had assured me that I would be okay if I stayed in the country as a tourist for only 3 months after the expiration date. The customs officer didn’t think so. I did my best to explain my situation in Italian, and it seemed to work, but he kept asking me why I couldn’t speak Italian that well, and why I didn’t study hard enough, and I really just wanted to kill him at this point. Thankfully, he decided to let me through (I mean really, I was on my way out of the country, give me a break) but not without a stern warning of “pay more attention next time” before I left. This just made my flight to London more miserable–my last experience in Italy was a customs officer yelling at me for not paying attention when I had just been misinformed. I arrived at the London Gatwick airport around 7, and stood in a customs line for about an hour and a half. Once I bought my bus ticket to Heathrow (20 pounds more out of my bank account), I had some coffee and a muffin and took advantage of the free wireless to let people know I had completed (well, almost) the first leg of my journey home. The bus was another hour, at least, and when I arrived at Heathrow, I had no idea where to catch the bus to my hotel. I didn’t arrive at my hotel until around 12:30 (a lot later than I had originally expected) and promptly passed out around 1am.

I woke up at 5 and took the bus to Heathrow, where it turns out since I wasn’t technically flying internationally yet, I didn’t have to be there 3 hours before my flight (but I guess it was better to be safe than sorry). A good point of the day was being able to have an omelette for breakfast–I know it’s weird, but Italians don’t do breakfast food and I really missed being able to have eggs and potatoes. The flight to Amsterdam was short, but I slept anyway. I knew I was going to have a short connection on the other end, so I started running once I got off the plane. Of course, it was one of those situations where my terminal and the terminal I had to be in were on opposite ends of the airport, and after about 15 minutes of running with my rolling carry-on, I arrived at my gate (they were almost at the end of the line for the final security screening). The couple in front of me got randomly upgraded to first class and got all excited about it, and I mentally cursed them, because that would have been nice. However, I had the fortune of sitting next to a very nice looking gentleman from Amsterdam who happened to be a rocket scientist and was heading to the states to study in Texas for 6 months. We talked for awhile before takeoff, and then I passed out again. The worst thing about this flight was that it was in the middle of the day, and while the time that my body was adjusted to kept getting later and later, this was not reflected in the fact that it was still incredibly light outside (also did not make it easy to sleep).

We landed in Chicago around 1pm, and after making it through customs again, I realized I did not have my baggage (my short connection in Amsterdam was not enough time for them transfer it onto my plane)–but I think I almost expected that to happen. I wandered around the airport for a good hour, and turned my US cell phone back on and called a few of my friends from Drake as well as my sister. Had a bagel (something else I couldn’t enjoy in Italy) and found my terminal, where I tried not to fall asleep. That ended up happening on the last leg of the trip, and I honestly do not remember anything after take off in Chicago except for the moments before I landed in Green Bay. Thankfully the Green Bay airport isn’t hard to navigate with its two terminals and 10 gates or something like that, and I was still disoriented as my family met me excitedly in the waiting area. For that brief moment, I was happy to see them and happy to be home, but that moment disappeared almost as soon as it happened, and I hated being back in the states. I had heard about reverse culture shock and how it sucked, but I didn’t think it was going to be this bad. I always found a reason to hate where I lived because it was so different from Ferrara, and honestly, that made for a pretty depressing rest of summer. Fortunately, I have stayed in very close contact with Maria and Luciana and am able to occasionally practice my Italian so I don’t forget how to say anything.

Overall, I must say that my decision to study abroad in Italy easily made for the most memorable and biggest learning experience of my entire life (so far, anyway). I plan on continuing this blog now with my observations on the cultural differences between Italy and the United States (because they never fail to amuse and amaze me).

–è tutto. Ciao!