At the beginning of my journey I had a rough time. I was in a place which was not familiar and surrounded by strangers. Moreover, I was trying to adapt to a new culture that was completely new to me. So, as a result I had a few confrontations, most of which involved the locals. A lot of these interactions felt personal as I couldn’t understand why they seemed so upset by the littlest miscommunications, especially given the fact that Rome is a tourist city and I am sure they get tons of tourists from all sorts of places, speaking different languages and having different cultural backgrounds. However, I choose to take a step back and try to understand it from there perspective, and as it turns out I dont think America is that much different from Italy or more specifically, I dont think Rome is all that different from New York City. In fact, this sort of frustration and impatience felt familiar. It felt like that common stereotype of New Yorkers who are also perceived unfriendly because of their behavior. Yet, after living here for about a month I can understand why they would be frustrated. For instance, one of my Italian professors like to describe Rome as disorganized and theres some truth to that. Rome can be frustrating if your commuting from further away because transportation here isn’t as reliable. Workers often go on strike and there is little notice about it. Furthermore, Rome is very fast paced, similar to most cities and im sure its quite bothersome to have tourists around who dont understand this. So, now when I look back at these interactions I dont take them so personally. In fact, I can kind of laugh about them because they remind me that Italy may not be so different from America and as much as we like to point out our difference’s there are also similarities between cultures and ways of life.
