Italian Experience Week One/Two: Cinque Terre and Pizza-Making

Buongiorno! I have a had a whirlwind week-and-a-half here in Italy and I have loved every second of it! During my first week at school I did not have much intercultural interaction because I was on the CIMBA campus with all of my fellow American students. However, for my first weekend I traveled to a beautiful coastal region of Italy called Cinque Terre, which in Italian means "five lands". The region is made up of five coastal cities built into the sides of the mountains on the Mediterranean Sea. I think I can say with absolution that it is the most beautiful place I have been to in my life so far and it was very fun to be on our own in Italy for the first time. We were just thrown into the mix and had to figure out ourselves how to navigate and get around. I traveled with my group of friends that I met at the airport (we call each other "family" now!) and I felt very safe having such a great group to travel with.

One of my favorite things to do is just sit and watch the Italians interact with each other. It is so interesting to me to view other cultures and see how much I can learn from just watching. Some things I noticed is that Italians are more touch-feely than we are in American...they don't see it is a problem to stand really close to you whereas in American we like our personal bubble a little more : ) Also, in class we talked about how you will see a lot of older people riding bikes in Italy and I definitely noticed that! One night we were eating dinner outside and I saw people, especially elderlies, riding by on bikes at least three time throughout the course of the night. We also talked about how Italians like to take their walks at night and simply stroll through town and enjoy each other's company...I definitely noticed that as well! I love that concept; it is so simple yet so enjoyable. There is no better place to walk around than Italy with all of the beautiful winding neighborhoods and boardwalks specifically in the Cinque Terre region where we were. I found that most of the Italians we came into contact with, mainly at restaurants, spoke at least a little English so it wasn't too hard to communicate with them. I carry around my little Italian translation book everywhere I go and it has definitely come in handy a few times. I've found that if you can't understand what someone is saying, it is beneficial to use nonverbal communication, such as hand gestures, to try to explain what you are trying to say. I have learned a little bit of language in the short time I've been here, specifically exactly how to order gelato! Ha : )

A very interesting thing that happened in Cinque Terre was a situation that happened with our hostel. We had to book two different ones for the two nights we were there because the one we had for our first night didn't have room to book it another night. We were really bummed out about that, especially when we got there because it was a nice hostel in a good location and with all of our friends. We looked up our other hostel and it was way far away and would take so long to get to that we would miss out on exploring Cinque Terre. Amazingly, on the morning of the day that we were going to have to switch hostels a maid came up to our room and said that we could stay another night! We were so excited, but we wondered if we would be able to cancel the other hostel on such short without having to pay the full night of our stay. We were really nervous about calling the other place because we really didn't want to have to move or pay a lot of money. I volunteered to call, even though I hardly know any Italian. I called and the lady that I spoke with didn't speak hardly any English at all, but she managed to understand that I was calling about our reservation. She started looking for our reservation and the phone was silent for a long time...I thought she had hung up but she was still looking. She said she couldn't find it and that I should call back in an hour. Well, we didn't really have an hour and I knew that even if she did find it, there was no way I could communicate to her what were were trying to ask about our reservation. So one of my friends Josh came up with a brilliant plan. He suggested that we have the manager from our hostel call the other hostel and explain our situation. The lady at our hostel was so nice and she spoke very good English so we explained our situation to her and she was more than happy to call the other place. She called and spoke Italian to the other hostel owner, and guess what the deal was? The other place had actually double-booked our room and the lady was so relieved and happy that we were calling to cancel our reservation! We could not believe our luck!! I just thought that was an interesting example of intercultural communication and how sometimes you have to be creative and come up with a solution.

I want to talk about another amazing example of intercultural communication that I just experienced two days ago. Me and four other students signed up for a pizza-making class at an authentic pizza place in the town of Asolo which is a very quick bus ride from campus, about 20 minutes. CIMBA had set this up for us and had arranged for two students from their MBA campus to meet us there and translate because the owner of Pizzeria Cornaro doesn't speak hardly any English. We got there about two hours before our lesson started so we walked around the town for a bit and then meandered to the pizza place to sit outside and relax before we started. The owner saw us outside and had us come in and start the lesson about 30 minutes early. This would've been fine except the graduate students wouldn't be there for another half-hour...we were a little bit worried about how this would go. He first poured us all glasses of Prosecco (incredible!) and then he started to talk to us about Italian pizza and explain the whole process of making it. He was so kind and genuinely wanted us to learn. He understood that we didn't know much Italian so he talked slow and repeated things and used a few English words where he could. At first, we did not know how this was going to to work because we had trouble understanding anything he was saying. Thankfully, me and my friend Chelsea have taken quite a bit of Spanish and we actually started to be able to pick up certain things and words that we recognized! It is really interesting how Italian and Spanish languages have a lot of similarites and if you listen very carefully you can pick up more than you think you might be able to. If Chelsea and I understood something we would translate it to the rest of the group. Besides trying to dechipher the language, a lot of hand gesturing and pointing and non-verbal communication took place in order to understand each other. He was very understanding and patient throughout the entire process. Something that I loved is that he was so passionate when he was explaining things to us. I've noticed that many Italians are very passionate people and animated speakers; they really care about what they are saying and doing and want to express that to other people. He talked to us for about 30 minutes and it actually turned out ok and we learned a lot about Italian pizza making! One thing that was so interesting to me is that because the crust is so thin and the wood-fire oven is so hot, it only takes four minutes for one pizza to cook! That is so cool to me. Anyway, right when we started making our own pizzas, the MBA students showed up! After the part that we needed them the most of course : ) They were still very helpful and were able to explain more about things we had missed earlier, but we found out that we had actually understood the majority of it! That made us feel pretty good and like we had succeed in communication at least somewhat effectively. The MBA students were actually two Italian guys; for some reason we all thought that they would be English students who knew Italian, but it was just the opposite which was really cool. They were really funny and joked around with us...that is another thing that I've noticed about Italian guys in particular! When I was making my pizza, the sweet owner was supervising me and helping me get the dough just right. I noticed that if he wanted to show me something or for me to do something different, he would say "Attenzione!" in a commanding voice. It took me aback a few times and at first I thought he was upset with me, but I came to learn that is just how they say "Look",  or "Watch this". We also learned that Italians are more direct than what Anglo-saxons are used to, so that is part of it too. This experience is one of the highlights of my trip so far and something that I will remember forever!

Today I am headed off to Rome and I'm sure I will return with some more interesting experiences to share...Ciao for now!