Monday, October 29, 2012

The One with Two Stories

So this week may not have been the most eventful of weeks, but two VERY funny things happened. I thought I'd share them with you.

Story #1: Fat Problems
I feel like I should preface this story by explaining that everyone in Italy is very honest. They're not rude, they just call it the way they see it. My roommate, Anne, and I have both gained a significant amount of weight, but neither of us could be considered fat or heavy. However, our host family would seem to disagree. Marco has decided to go on a diet and so he went to the dietician the other day to get one custom designed for him. He was telling us about this new diet and I naively made the joke that our moms had planned similar diets for us when we get back home. From here things went a little down hill... Paola said (totally serious) that Anne had gotten so fat that her mom wouldn't even recognize her when she got of the plane. Ouch! Who says that? The funny part was that she didn't think that she was being mean at all. So then Marco puffed up his cheeks and said that that was what Anne looked like. Paola proceeded to observe that Anne's face had gotten rounder. As if fat insults weren't enough they called Anne a "slow wheel."What does that even mean?!? Apparently it means that Anne does everything slowly, but that she always gets where she needs to go. We were in shock and had absolutely no idea what to say. When we got back to our room I LITERALLY rolled on the floor laughing. Fortunately Anne was not gravely offended by any of the occurrences of the evening.

Story #2: Sanitary?
In my Italian class we spend most of the time just talking about social issues and customs in America and Italy. We were discussing the relative differences in sanitation between Rome and Milan. I joked that Italians would think Americans were disgusting because we don't use gloves when we pick out fruit at the grocery store. This was followed by a question about how often Americans wash their hands everyday. We said that it depended on how many time they go to the bathroom. Our teacher than asked whether we washed our hands before or after we go to the bathroom. We of course told him after. He was SO disgusted. Apparently in Italy people wash their hands before they go to the bathroom! Weird! He said that only the really clean people wash their hands after as well. This led to a lesson about how to use a bidaai. He was shocked that we had never used one and even more grossed out when we said we didn't have them in America.

Yay for cultural differences!

1 comment:

  1. Also, I'm apparently very lazy. Did I cry? Almost. But then I remembered I'm 22 and to have a thicker skin. And by that, I mean, wait to cry until I get home lol.

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