An experience I had while studying abroad was the hours of operation. Every day, most restaurants close around 2:30 pm compared to in the states where individuals can eat anywhere at any time. To accommodate the eating hours, I had to rearrange my schedule. I finished school at 1:55pm every day, so I had to choose between eating near school, which gave me 30 minutes to order and eat, or walking back and stopping at a grocery store to cook at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was initially frustrating because restaurants were not only closed at 2:30pm, but they were also permanently closed at 10:30pm every night. This time range wasn’t too bad, but if I wanted to eat near the Pantheon or the Trevi Fountain, I wouldn’t be able to because of the buses. The timing of public transportation was not predictable. I adapted my schedule and learned to be ready early and allow myself more time to get to places. I learned to take the earlier buses so that even if they were late, I would still arrive on time. The different mealtime schedules forced me to explore other neighborhoods while looking for new eating options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A person from my host culture would see my experience as something that can be easily adapted by understanding and learning from the culture. I believe my host culture understands that Americans are known as people who do everything quickly, as opposed to Italians who take their time. I didn’t understand why they would choose to close restaurants early and take so long doing something at first, but my Italian classes taught me that they place a high value on time. Italians take pride in living in the moment and working hard for a limited amount of time because that is how they enjoy life the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These reflections prepare me to respond to future cultural misunderstandings and conflicts, as each culture is unique and has its own beauty. I believe that traveling increases knowledge and that studying abroad allows people to immerse themselves in a culture and understand why they do things differently. Something as simple as a time schedule variation in meal times, simply confirmed that I should expect a change in my future study abroad programs. That is the purpose of traveling: to compare and contrast what we believe to be normal, with what other cultures consider customary. I learned that I have to avoid taking situations personally.\u00a0 I have to adjust to my new circumstances, and not expect the world to adjust to me. I believe this experience has allowed me to become more tolerant and flexible. I hope that future students reading this will have an opportunity to consider that organized campus life is very different than urban living in an eclectic capital such as Rome. Finally, I feel that those differences that at first seem inconvenient, later become part of the charm that brings about nostalgia as we daydream of the best semester of our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An experience I had while studying abroad was the hours of operation. Every day, most restaurants close around 2:30 pm compared to in the states where individuals can eat anywhere at any time. To accommodate the eating hours, I had to rearrange my schedule. I finished school at 1:55pm every day, so I had to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[369],"class_list":["post-20767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-isarome","tag-rollinsabroad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20768,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20767\/revisions\/20768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}