September 13th, 2012
We started class today by talking about what we did yesterday. I felt really cool when all I had to offer was "I did laundry..."
When the teacher asked the last student what he had done, he casually answered, "I got a tattoo."
Um, add that to the list of things you don't hear at BYU.
For some reason I had the idea that my classes here would consist of a few other people, who probably spoke English and were college students like me. In reality, the classes are far from this. My class has one other woman from the U.S. She told me her age once, but I forgot; I think it was somewhere around 70. There's a middle-aged man from Switzerland, a young married couple from Australia, a young girl from Venezuela, another girl from Hong Kong and the boy who got a tattoo yesterday; he's a cook from Japan. And this is in my class alone. There are people here from all over and all different ages and backgrounds. It's kind of awesome because we all have these differing languages and cultures, but we're all trying to acclimate to Italian together. I like it and it's nice to be in a different environment than what I'm used to.
After living in Provo for 3 years you get a certain idea of what is "normal" and you think you fit in that scheme (usually). But living here I see that being an American, LDS college student is anything but normal. For one thing, I'm always tired (that's unusual pretty much anywhere I live) but here people are always saying, "Go drink some coffee! Duh! That will help you out right away." And I have to timidly say, "No, I don't drink coffee... so I'll just stay exhausted." And they're kind of like "Okay weirdo..." Just kidding, people are really nice, but they do think I'm kind of strange, especially when I miss out on the wonderful wine Italy has to offer.
Anyway, this was just kind of a rant on the fact that culture is real and it changes the way we perceive the world in such a radical way. And not just our nationality but everything from the city we live in to our system of beliefs, the TV shows we watch or what we study in school. All these things make us "normal" in our specific community and totally strange when we relocate. These are things I already knew, but I'm learning so much more living here.