Some Facts about Italy...

A few facts I have learned about Italy: 

Things Italians Like:

• Saying Ciao – I must hear it 100 times a day 

• Parmesan – We eat it on top of everything. Not a meal is made without cooking it into the dish somehow 

 • Boots – when it’s cold outside, you wear boots. What a novel concept. 

• Yelling and being loud – nothing like being in a room with kids screaming, dogs barking, moms talking, TV going, and phone ringing! 

• Olive Oil – another secret ingredient in pretty much every meal 

• Pasta – eaten by every Italian family at least once a day. Like rice in Asia. 

• Saying Bella – Beautiful seems to be the most common adjective for something well-liked in Italy                                                                                                                                    • Wine – can’t complain about the frequent wine tastings I get at home with extravagant Italian wines!                                                                                                                      • Skinny jeans – it’s a European thing, but definitely an Italian thing too

• Dry bread – always good for an afternoon snack, served with cheese, jam, olive oil, or prosciutto

• Recycling – I think we have 5 different bins in our house… paper, plastic, organic, trash, glass… it’s crazy. Europeans are so hardcore about it, they will even separate a plastic lid from a cardboard milk carton and recycle each of those in the proper bin. Americans could learn a thing or two about saving the environment from the Italians! 

• Prosciutto – it’s not just popular in Italian restaurants. Italians like their ham!

• Smoking – besides the family I live with, I have yet to meet an Italian that doesn’t smoke (at least for the young people) 

• Saying Mamma Mia – they really do say that here!!

• Kisses – Italians don’t hug goodbye, they kiss; thus it is extremely awkward every time I forget this and lean in to hug someone who is trying to kiss my cheek…

• Staying up late – The evening doesn’t start (dinner included) until around 9:00. I don’t know about you, but I get pretty hungry by then! 

 
Things you will never be able to find in Italy: 

• Spaghetti with meatballs – Just a false Italian stereotype. Only spaghetti with tomatoes is served here, while meatballs are a totally separate dish. Whoever mixed the two is American, and is genius. 

 • A dryer – still don’t understand this one, but they just don’t use them here

• Peanut Butter – although Nutella seems to be quite popular

• Salted butter – they only have sweet; I guess who needs butter when you’ve got olive oil, right? 

• A Mexican restaurant – I am quickly coming to thoroughly appreciate the variety the U.S. offers in ethnic cuisine

• A movie in its original language – Italian voiceovers are some of the best in the world, so literally every theater you go to has only movies that are dubbed over in Italian

• Starbucks – even the world’s most famous coffee chain can’t compete with an authentic Italian cappuccino. After all, where do you think Starbucks got its inspiration in the first place?

• Apple Cinnamon candles – even during the Christmas season, not so popular around here 

• An automatic car – hence why I haven’t been driving. Someone recently told me that manual cars are good because there’s a lot of hills around here… still not seeing the advantage

• A restaurant that serves olive oil with parmesan cheese and pepper to dip your bread in – totally an American twist on Italian ingredients

• A shop open before eleven on a Monday morning – come on, it’s Monday. Who wants to go back to work early in the morning after the weekend anyways? 

• Bruschetta – I know when you just read that you read Brew-shett-uh, and you’re thinking of toasted bread with diced tomatoes and garlic on top. If you’re ordering it in Italy, make sure to pronounce it correctly – Bru-sket-uh – and know you will get toasted garlic bread with olive oil, not tomatoes. Traditionally the bread is toasted over hot coals. 

 • An Italian family eating dinner before 8:00 – Italians run on a much different time schedule. Lunch at 1 or 2, siesta till four (all the shops are closed), and everything back to work and back open until 8. The night only just begins at 8 or 9. 

• Ice cubes – have not seen a single one since I’ve been here 

• Air Conditioning – good thing it’s winter, because Zoila informed me it gets up to 105 in the summer, and not many people have AC. Yikes!

• Large cups – everyone drinks out of cups the size of Dixie cups. I can’t figure out how everyone isn’t dehydrated all the time 

• Cranberry sauce, pumpkin mix, and pecans – Ok, well we obviously know which holiday is on my mind! 

 
Things that came from Italy that you may have never realized (or maybe just I didn’t realize):

• Cappuccino, espresso, latte, mocha – all the fancy coffee drinks we love so much in the U.S. 

• The Mafia – Okay, we all know they originated in Italy, but apparently they’re actually real here and are a big deal. Watch out if you go to southern Italy like Sicily or Naples! 

• Bologna – the meat is actually called Mortadella, but we call it bologna because it comes from the city Bologna. Now how we went from Bow-lown-yuh to buh-lown-ee, I have no idea. Ask Oscar Mayer. 

• Music terms – this is pretty widely known, but now that I know how to read and pronounce Italian, it makes so much more sense to think of words like crescendo, piano, fortissimo, adagio, legato, etc. However, for you music people out there, piano in Italian actually means slow down, not get softer like it does in music.

• Names of instruments – like cello, mandolin, viola, bassoon, tuba, and timpani 

• Other food words like – ciabatta, broccoli, Panini, zucchini, and focaccia. Once you understand the weird pronunciation rules with c, cc, and ci or ce in Italian, then you finally get where the strange pronunciation for those words comes from!