By Mary Coyle
Things I do in Italy that I don’t really do at home:
1) Drink Fanta. Italy loves Fanta – and now I do too. (For the uninitiated, Fanta is really just orange soda.) I drink it almost as much as caffe. It’s fruity and delicious and completely unhealthy and I love it.
2) Go a month without drinking milk. I had my first glass of milk since getting here the other day. Megan and I finally decided to brave the unknown at the GS and get a liter of the green kind. I’m still alive, so I guess it was ok.
3) Eat fungi. I’ve been eating a ton of vegetables that I usually refuse to touch at home – onions, spinach, mushrooms, etc. We’ve been doing alot of stir fries with pasta and chicken, and surprise! It actually ends up being delicious. All I had to do was decide to live in a country where I can barely communicate with people before I decided to eat whatever gets put in front of me.
4) Pay 9 euro to walk through a garden. I went to this gorgeous place called Villa d’Este in a town about an hour outside of Rome on Friday. It’s a Renaissance-era villa and has a bunch of semi-cool, semi-wierd artwork inside. The wall decorations were really intricate, but mostly gave it the appearance of a funhouse. The best part was definitely the gardens – the backyard of this place was huuuge, with tons of paths and shrubs with fountains everywhere. There were even a few waterfalls, and along the edge was a great view of the side of the mountain. It was absolutely gorgeous.
5) Watch silent movies. My favorite class is my history/film class. We watch movies about ancient Rome and then dissect its historical accuracy and significance – it’s incredibly nerdy, but it’s right up my alley and I love it.
6) Speak Italian. My Italian teacher speaks in Italian almost the entire class time, so it’s really good practice for “the real world”. I actually learned how to order something properly last week; but, I’ve been so hungry every time I go into an alimentari to order a sandwich that I usually forget how to phrase it.