Sojin Josephson

Today in Italian class, the professor asked my roommate what she was studying in school. She studies education and answered “Formaggio” with confidence. The professor laughed and said, “You study cheese?” We all proceeded to laugh about it for a few minutes and she was embarrassed, but it could have happened to any of us. In my mind, that moment summed up the entire journey so far. Mistake and laugh, mistake and laugh, repeat.

But as my 11^th day comes to a close, I feel mostly settled in. There are obviously big differences in my daily routine here, but I’m just happy to finally have a routine. I have never felt more scattered or lost than those first few days, but I’m learning.

To get to school, it is about a 7-minute walk to the Piola metro stop, a 20-minute metro ride to the San Ambrogio stop and a 3-minute walk to school. I’ve been timing it daily. We started the intensive Italian language course this week. We spend about four hours in class every day and it goes fast. But they call it intensive for a reason. I am a visual learner, so the constant dialogue and conversation doesn’t actually do me much good. I come home and do exercises out of my textbook and repeat rules to myself so that I don’t look like a fool the next day. After class ends, my friends and I run errands or fill out more permits or paperwork for this very bureaucratic country. Then we eat gelato. Although it’s been less than two weeks, we have been exploring new parts of the city every day. We’re starting to find our favorite places to eat, shop and hang out in different areas of Milan.

My two favorite gelato shops so far: Cioccolati Italiani and Shockolat. It’s hard to even describe the feeling of eating this stuff. There are these sinks with white, milk and dark chocolate running out of the faucets. They ask which one you want and put it in the bottom of your cone. I’m addicted.

If gelato is my favorite Italian word, aperitivo is my second favorite. We’ve been fortunate enough to hang out with some local Italians and they introduced us last week. Aperitivo is when you pay $10 for a drink (I encourage the strawberry daiquiris) and then have an all-you-can-eat buffet of appetizers. But we treat it as dinner. And the buffets are not like American Golden Corral’s; they’re like every delicious Italian food freshly lined up in a trendy bar or restaurant with all the trendy people.

I can’t wait to learn the different foods in Italian class because going to the store and to restaurants, which we do a lot, is still an issue. Most of the time I guess and point and am either pleasantly surprised or horrified. We’ve accidentally ordered sardines on pizza, along with a number of other bizarre foods. Mistake number one was trying to eat at a sushi restaurant on one of our first nights. I can’t read sushi menus in the U.S., let alone another country. I only like vegetarian sushi, but ordered some raw fish with the guess-and-point method. I had to poke it all out the bottom with my chopsticks and then couldn’t explain to the waitress that there wasn’t anything wrong with it. So it’s safe to say that I can’t wait to get to the food chapter.

I miss free water and the many cups of tea I drink everyday in the States. My roommates and I just finished drinking lemon tea out of Belvedere Vodka cups because we have no mugs and are too cheap to buy any. Let me just say that making tea in our apartment is a process, so it’s a rare occasion. But I’m embracing the new culture and replacing water with wine and tea with beer. Of course I’m over exaggerating a bit, but it feels that way. We can get good wine and beer here for 2 euro and good coffee is 1 euro. We’re spoiled. At school, we have cappuccino vending machines. The machines have a claw that hold onto a small plastic cup and fill it with hot foamy goodness for .50 euro. It’s heaven. I’ll never be able to justify the $4.50 Grande lattes at Starbucks again.

The apartment is falling apart, but in a way that makes me laugh. There’s something new every day. I’m still using coats as blankets. The light in my room is hanging by the wires and I hit my head on it at least three times a day. The leg on my desk chair fell off and I put it by the door and my roommate tripped over it in the middle of the night. Oops. I’m also not used to the no dryer thing. It’s weird hanging my socks and underwear on racks that look like they’re from the 19^th century and to have crunchy jeans. But hey, it’s eco-friendly.

The mishaps are not as frequent as in the first week, but still happen. I knew pickpockets were big here, but it was one of those concepts that I couldn’t grasp because I didn’t think it would ever happen to me. But it did. I’m still mourning the loss of my iPhone. It’s just another adventure.

I still can’t believe I’m in Italy. I get waves where I have to stop and tell myself that I’m here. People come from all over the world to study abroad at Cattolica and we’re all here for the same reasons, so I find everyone very likeable and interesting. But it’s also been fun to hang out with the Italians because they know the culture, read us the menus and like to tell us about all of the American stereotypes (which are pretty comical). I’m living the dream.