first day in Perugia, Italy

50 Shades of Mozzarella

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to present: PERUGIA, IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITALY! Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

People, let me tell you, Perugia is an absolute dream. When I pictured Italy, it is exactly what I imagined. I have to pinch myself every time I walk outside my apartment because everything is so beautiful and I am so so appreciative of all my surroundings. I am a big eater, as you will come to read, and I cannot even begin to express how amazing the food is here. I knew it was one of the best things about Italy before I even arrived, but I did not truly understand it until I came here and tried it for myself. Everything is so fresh and delicious. Not yet have I ate something that I was not pleased with, and it seems to just keep getting better and better. I have ate pizza everyday so far, and probably more than once a day on occasion. There is not one pizza here that is the same as another. Each is in its own way different but always delicious. It is actually very funny, my Italian teacher Francesco asked me yesterday in class what my boyfriend’s name was. I laughed and responded: mangia aka food. Just to get your salivary glands in action, I have some pictures of my boyfriend to show you:

The last picture is of the best tiramisu I have ever had in my entire life, and it was served in a bowl that would put America’s fame for obesity to shame. I am actually getting really hungry just looking at it.

Italy itself

Aside from the amazing meals, there are so many things that set Italy apart from the United States. Something that I find extremely different and interesting are the toilets. The water tank is usually separate from the actual toilet, mounted high above on a wall. There is the closest thing to a button that you press high above on this tank to flush the toilets. I know it’s not that big of a deal, but it looks so much more sophisticated than American toilets. I quite like it.

Italians do not seem to have breakfast, a simple espresso and brioche at most suit them perfectly fine. I am still adjusting to this way of life by beginning to make toast in my apartment before class and buying an espresso at school with my class during our morning break for 70 cents. For lunch, a slice or two of pizza seems to be the most common meal – I don’t think this is something I will ever complain about. However, dinner is served at the earliest, at 8:30 pm. It is customary for people to go to bars and order apertivos which are drinks with company an hour or two before dinner. This is something I am having a great deal of difficulty adjusting to. As much as I love vino rosso, red wine, I am trying to limit my intake before dinner due to being on an empty stomach. Some places have buffets that you can snack on while enjoying your libations, however my friends and I have been really hungry during these times and ended up eating an amount from the buffet equivalent to a large meal. This doesn’t seem to be the right way of going about it, but we are still trying to adjust.

The Language

During my 20 years of existence, 12 of them were spent studying Spanish. From kindergarten to senior year of high school I always had a Spanish class. Because I took such a large amount of one language, I was exempt from my language requirement at Penn State. Therefore, this is the first time I have taken a language since I was 17, three years ago, and it is the first time I have been in a country whose primary language is not English. My hardest transition to Italy has easily been the Italian language.

This past Tuesday, we started “Survival Italian” class. Every student in the Umbra program, 90 of us from the United States, have been required to take this week of intensive Italian before the semester began. Organized by experience level, I am in a class of other students who have never taken Italian. Most of us have taken Spanish or French, but it is reassuring to know that there are others in the same boat. Interestingly enough, I wish I had taken Italian sooner. I enjoy this language so much more than Spanish. My background in Spanish has definitely helped when learning Italian for the first time, because lots of words are almost identical in both languages but usually with a slightly different pronunciation. However, I like Italian so much more than Spanish because in Italian you have to pronounce every. single. syllable. in. the. word. And not only that, but you must pronounce them in a dramatic and loud manner. This is great for me, because I am “slightly” dramatic and already kind of talk like that. Also, I am much more interested when learning Italian because it benefits my immediate future. I constantly am interacting with native Italians here, and most of them surprised me by not being very proficient in English, if at all. Therefore I am eager to learn the language because it makes my time here so much easier by already knowing a few more words and phrases every day. I think it also helps that my professor is a native Italian, whom not only teaches us the proper form of the language but also the everyday dialect of the Perugian people.

We also do fun activities to make the lessons we do in class, more applicable to every day life. Yesterday we went to a typical apartment in this city and had to label all of the furniture and items around the house with the Italian vocabulary we learned that day in class. Today, our professor showed us how to ride the city’s metro and brought us to a supermarket outside of walking distance from our school and apartment. We all were given assignments to analyze a specific type of food sold there in the market, and note the differences between brands, prices, and places of production. Our last day of survival Italian class is tomorrow morning, and there we will present what we found interesting from our shopping trip. We were all given half an hour to browse the market and shop for our own apartments during this assignment. My roommates and I went grocery shopping a couple days ago to get basic food items at the local grocery store in our town. The only thing we recognized in the entire store was Ritz crackers and Coca-Cola. I was probably the happiest girl in the world today when I found lactose free milk, because I am lactose intolerant, and Frosted Flakes at this larger market. To hold me over for dinner, I ate a bowl of it while writing this post and it brought me so much joy to have a bit of home here in Italy.

I already miss a few aspects of America such as my native language, bigger breakfasts, and using cars as a main source of transportation. But I wouldn’t trade this view in for the world. This my friends, is Perugia.

Location: Perugia, Italy