truth is...

Before coming to Italy, everyone I ever knew told me "what I should expect" in Italy. In all honesty, I ignored all of you. Unless you've actually been to Italy, then I listened. I heard things, but not limited to:
:

• what if your host family is part of the Mob/Mafia?
• you better like wearing high heels!
• oh the coffee over there is so strong!
• did you know (insert part of Italy) and (insert other part of Italy) hate each other?
• the pasta over there is fantastic!!1!11!
• oh everyone there is beautiful, especially the boys. You're so lucky!

I'm not a believer, nor have I ever been a believer in stereotypes and generalizations of populations or countries. Only are they okay when next to nothing or in fact nothing is known about a population (in my opinion). I face a lot of generalizations/stereotypes every day that I live here that people have on Americans; that we're fat, we're contradicting, we're conceited, we're hillbillies/cowboys/celebrities, we go out every weekend, we throw parties, cheerleaders are mean, jocks are stupid, drama club is like Glee... Really. I've been on the receiving end of all of this crap. Nothing is really to blame here, as most of what the kids are watching here are American shows that are badly dubbed over in Italian, and they really do think of high school in the States as High School Musical or our night life as Jersey Shore. So this is me trying to help everyone get a better understanding of Italian generalizations/stereotypes that I know exist.

• Pasta. Let me clear something up here. There is a difference between American "Italian" food and Italian food. Go to your nearest Olive Garden and the first things on your menu are spaghetti and meatballs, fettuccine alfredo, ravioli, lasagne, and chicken parmesean. Some of these don't even exist here. I haven't had alfredo or even seen the dang word here. Spaghetti and meatballs is just about as American as macaroni and cheese; Italians would laugh until they cried if they saw it. Or maybe just cry. Chicken/eggplant parmesean is not a pasta, it is a dish almost like lasagna without pasta. Plus they only do the eggplant here.

          Going off on this carbohydrate-loaded rant, the Italian you know is about as much Italian as Cheese Wiz is cheese. Let's go with the stereotypical chain restaurant in the States. You know that wonderful, life-changing moment when the waiter at the restaurant brings you out a hunk of bread sliced into 10 pieces, pours olive oil on a plate and cracks some pepper onto it? OH, HOW ITALIAN. We do different variations of that here, but never would you ever see someone pour so much oil on a plate then sprinkle a little mediocre pixie dust on it. What we do is called "fare la scarpetta" or "do the little shoe". It doesn't make any sense, but this is the initiation of being Italian. To do the little shoe, after you finish your dinner, you use the hunk of bread (which is always sitting beside your plate, ALWAYS) and tear it into pieces to mop up whatever is left. You don't add squat. On very rare occasions, they will add a very small amount of oil if they want to eat a lot of bread, but never a plateful. 

• Coffee. Okay, coffee doesn't exist here like it does in the States. Every morning, we use a little tiny metal pot thing on the stove that looks something like this:

This is where the magic happens. You stick this sucker on the stove with water in the skirt-ish looking thing at the very bottom and espresso in the waist-ish part of the thing (if you compare the device to a woman). After about 5 minutes, you got espresso. Not EXpresso. Espresso. 

Whatever you do with this after is up to you. My family mixes it with milk in a very magical machine that makes it very foamy and delicious, then we drink it with biscotti for breakfast. 

Side note: if you seriously want your "venti" cup of mocha frappucino pumpkin spice eggnog carmel-uccino, you're immediately notified as a foreigner and will kindly exit to the left. But really, it's here, but you don't order it.

• feuds between areas of Italy Okay, they exist but it's over freaking soccer. 
• attractiveness This one made me LOL forever when I first got here. Italians are known internationally for their amazing looks and sense of fashion. My expectations, I admit, were high. When I got here and took a look at the people of my school....basically, guys aren't all supermodels. There are some strange haircuts here that you American girls would vomit when you saw it. There are some attractive guys but our version of attractive is completely different from their version of attractive. Girls are very beautiful, but there is a lot of time spent and money spent to look the way they do. Clothing is a priority here, I'm pretty sure it ranks over food for some of them. It's more of an annoyance to me because I'm not spending 50 Euro on a shirt that's ugly and I wouldn't want to wear anyways, and that's why I've only bought 1 article of clothing here in over 2 months. That's right. 
• Mafia/Mob This one is still partially unknown to me. It depends on who you ask about it. If you ask any adult, they will say it's a thing of the past. If you ask a teenager, chances are they will go into an hour-long spiel of how the Mafia runs everything in Sicily and has higher rankings than the police. I don't want to say anything I'm not certain about, so I will just say this: I have not seen, been a part of, met, encountered, or heard of anything related to the Mafia since I've been here. The Godfather and Scarface are nonexistent. 

A LESSON ON SICILIAN HAND GESTURES

Hands are a total language of their own. Sometimes, it is difficult to differentiate between sign language and just being Sicilian. 

-if you see someone with the "pinch" hands, the typical Italian gesture we all know: they are explaining you something.

-if someone has their hands together flat in a full out prayer position, shaking them back and forth (possibly accompanied by "mamma mia"): they are not happy with you, and they're not really afraid of it.

- using two fingers and swirling them in a circle in the same way that you would turn the handle of a jack-in-the-box: they want to do something after.

-sliding the backside of their hand underneath their chin towards the person they are speaking to: they don't care. (this is not rude, just like an "it doesn't matter to me" type thing.)

-both hands at waist level, palms up, sliding them back and forth: they are into the conversation and want you to know their side of it. 

Side note: I do all of these.

STUFF YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT ITALY

1. No one wears shorts here. It was a good 90 degrees for a while in October and still, everyone wore jeans. I only wear shorts when I'm not going to school, and doing something that could be considered touristy so I have more of a justification.
2. Music here has a very heavy Spanish influence. 
3. Never, ever, EVER let a knife touch/cut your pasta. You will start a revolt.
4.  Continued, don't eat fruit with skin or without slicing it.
5. About 1-4 o'clock every day, a lot of the shops close down. This is because lunch is the biggest meal of the day, taking a while to eat, and some sleep for an hour or two in a recovery coma. (This is more of a Sicilian thing).
6. Most shows on television are just dubbed over English shows, not Italian. Take Disney Channel for example, though. I know there's a show from Mexico that all of the girls love called "Violetta". I'm pretty sure there's one from a middle eastern country as well, and one from Korea. 
7. Seatbelts are more of a thing that you only use when you're yelled at to put it on... there have been more times than I can count that I tried to buckle and the buckle didn't exist. 
8. Pedestrians do not have the right of way when it comes to traveling. The food chain goes about scooters-bicycles-cars-stray dogs-pedestrians. It's ridiculous and it makes me so frustrated but it's just how it is. Scooters drive on the sidewalk and do not give a crap if you are there as well, you'll just have to move. 
9. Poverty is a real thing here, so often you will see the poor selling things like lighters, tissue packs, umbrellas, sunglasses, or hats on the street. In some cases (in the city especially), there will be 2 or 3 men with Coke bottles filled with soap and water with a big long squeegie waiting at stop lights, and they will start cleaning your windshield when you are at a red light. 
10. Public bathrooms do not provide toilet paper. (unless you get lucky, normally in places like airports and some restaurants have it. But in my school, toilet paper, even hand towels are not to be found). So ladies, if you're coming to Italy, stock up on the tissue packs.
11. Dogs are allowed inside of stores. Also, owners do not "pick up" after their dogs while walking them, leaving a really disgusting sidewalk. 
12. Sodas in the US that you think would exist here, such as Mountain Dew, root beer, or Dr. Pepper, do not. This is because in Europe, artificial coloring to food products is banned. Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Fanta are here, but instead of Fanta being neon orange like in the States, it's more of a dim yellowish color. It still tastes the same, it's just...better for you. My mom, brother and I were talking about this today at lunch.

It's hard to come up with these things because they are all normal for me now. I had to force myself into thinking into a previous mindset to come up with them. 

annnnnnd that's a wrap for this meaningless blog entry! Ci vediamo, ragazzi!