I passed my class, with pretty stinking good marks. I'm happy. Then i promptly got kicked out of my place, so throughout my stressful hostel search i decided to go to perugia for the weekend with one of my classmates. it was really relaxing and made some good contacts however, i dont think perugia is the place for me. We stayed in a farmhouse, and toured the small city oh and dont forget the visit to the chocolate factory! Two of the girls i lived with last month offered their couch for me to sleep on. Originally i was going to stay for a few nights and head to england however with our lovely terrorist threats I've been freaked out and am staying here for a bit longer. It's been great living with them. they make me feel really at home even though i'm totally imposing.
Now i am job searching, I really do feel like i'm ahead of the game compared to most of my class. they just finished cover letters, I have had mine sent out for awhile and am slowly hearing back from things. if you havent noticed, italians arent really prompt. I dont understand thier motives, but oh well. its each person for themselves.
I had a job interview yesterday, it was completely in Italian which was interesting. They told me when i went in that it was with massimo, he was definitely the one I spoke with on the phone that didnt speak english so I assumed that my interview would be interesting. He told me that it was to see how i acted in the teachers situation. To see if I could explain something in thier language if they didnt understand. They said I did well and they would be calling me for an actual second inteveiw, However i wasnt too impressed with the city. and I'm kinda feeling that Turkey is where I need to go to accomplish the goals I set for myself.
Ok to the impressive backbone story. My biggest pet peeve since I've been abroad is the "American Stereotype" My personal goal is to meet people and to try to breakdown their preconcieved notions of us. Last night REALLY pissed me off. The three girls i'm living with and I went to find some dinner. We came across this pretty nice looking restaurant that wasnt too pricey. the lady said she did have one table downstairs for us. Since we were starving we said we would take it. Just our luck it was set next to a table of 5 American girls who we ridiculously loud and obnoxious. We couldnt even talk to each other, like seriously couldnt talk to one another becasue we couldnt hear a thing except the screaming next to us. Caroline politely asked one of the americans to be a little quieter cause we are trying to enjoy our meal. Nothing... Laura asked later, and just got harassed by the annoying italians, Kristie stormed off to find out waiter, who asked them and it got quiet for 2 mins. then was back to normal. We were so embarassed of our culture that once the Italians left and we paid our bill we decided we needed to say something (by the way, they were all young 20-21 year old study abroad students b/c we heard them tell the italians how old they were) My friends decided it had to be me who said something, so they practiced a few things with me. The two that were really pissed left, and caroline and I stayed to make our opinions known. I politely tapped on on the shoulder and said that I was sorry we complained so much, (they blamed it on the italians) and we were like no, it was you guys too. And we said it was hard coming here because it was nights like tonight that make Italians hate our culture. They got a little defensive and we walked away, satisfied, and hoping that at least down the road they may look back at this and see what we mean.
We did have the talk that we may have been loud and obnoxious when we were study abroad students but we wanted to change what we could by sharing our experiences with them. Its frustrating to see that maybe i was like that, or even worse- that it is acceptable in our culture to be so rude.
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