Day Two: Justifying Ravioli
Ahoy! I’m Corey. I will be your host for today’s blog post. *Jazz hands*
Before I get into the good stuff, let me tell you a little bit about myself. We should get to know each other before I divulge the details of our FIRST FULL DAY IN #SIENA. So what makes up the Corey pie? Well, so glad you asked. I’m a 22 year old senior from Rock Hill, SC and I study English (literature. please note grammar is not my strong suit and there is a 90% chance this post will contain comma splices. #sorry) and Journalism at USC. Talents include: loving cats. Talents do not include: parallel parking.
So, our day began bright eyed and bushy tailed at the Piazza Gramsci. For those of you who don’t know what that means, in South Carolina talk; it was the big fancy intersection with all them Italian convenience stores and bus stops. We then were steered around the city by one of the on-site leaders (shout-out to Mike, you da bomb-diggity). Basically he was telling us helpful places to go throughout the city, ATMS, post offices, stores that will overcharge you, things like that!
We did other things today too, mostly official orientation business things, but what I want to focus this post on was our group activity.
Now, I’m not really one for icebreaker games or things of that sort (#introvert), so I will admit I went into this a little hesitant. And I’m not great at explaining things (Not an education major for a reason), but I will do the best I can. Basically, Mike split us up into two groups. Half of us were visitors and half of us were locals. The locals were given make believe cultural norms and it was the objective of the visitors to try and make a friend without knowing what these cultural norms were. If a visitor didn’t interact with a local in the correct way, the local would get “offended” and walk away.
Example: In the first make believe culture, people only greeted each other by saying “hey” and touching pointer fingers. If you started a conversation with “hi” or “how are you” the local would get offended and walk away. (I hope this makes sense)
This was a very frustrating game. I figured out the “hey” rule pretty quickly, but I was completely lost on the finger touching. Y’all I tried everything and still wasn’t getting it. I tried greeting them with Spock fingers, high fives, I even dabbed. Nothing. Eventually, after watching two locals greet each other, I figured it out.
This was a really cool activity because there’s the surface level of the matter, which is to keep an open mind when traveling to other places because you are literally in a different culture, and even though they don’t touch fingers as greetings where you are from, you will be the one that looks weird for not doing it. There’s more to this activity though.
Although people in Italy don’t greet each other by touching pointer fingers, it still can be difficult to communicate. MC (my fellow Gamecock roommate) and I have a host mother who does not know a lick of English, and we have never taken Italian before so it is quite the challenge. It gets difficult to talk with her sometimes, but it’s important to not give up on trying. I’m pleased to report that we have yet to pull out Google Translate or a dictionary! We just communicate as best as possible. A lot can be said through motions and *active listening*. A lot of words share the same roots as French (which I am semi-fluent in) and Spanish (which MC is completely fluent in). I repeat: *active listening is key* take notes, children.
Anyways, I’m going to wrap this up. Did I mention I tend to ramble? Well, now you know. PS: I realize the title has nothing to do with the post, I just thought it was cute.
