While almost everyone else is nearing their third month abroad, I am sitting here after being asked to sum up just two months, as I arrived at the beginning September. On September 5th, my plane dipped down into Venezia, Italy to begin the hardest two months of my entire life. This exchange has been good, but far from easy and so different than anything I imagined or expected. I am living in Udine, Italy which is about an hour northeast of Venice. It is a fairly small town where it rains often, and for any of you who have a preconception that Italy is decently warm all year long, I am sorry to burst your bubble, but my party was rained on (literally) pretty quickly after I arrived. Currently, it is colder here than it is at home, and I’m from CANADA. Udine is a beautiful city, with the typical old architecture, small streets, crazy drivers, old bicycles, le gelaterie (I should mention the gelato really is as good as we think), expensive clothes, beautiful and fashionable people, tons of pasta, great pizza and everything else Italian.
The first week was spent sleeping and walking around Udine, getting (somewhat) accustomed to the streets. I also had the chance to see Venice on one of the most beautiful days of the year. Venice is easily the most beautiful place I have ever been. For someone who loves the ocean and water as much as I do, Venice is like a dream, with canals as streets and boats as cars and ferries as taxies. I am seriously in love. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to actually visit any of the museums or attractions but we walked, through Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal(well, beside it at least) and all Venice’s greatness.
Life in Italy is much different than at home, and that is why I am still struggling to adjust. Not only is the Italian lifestyle different, with everything being later (like lunch, dinner, bedtime etc) as well as everything taking more time it seems; but my lifestyle drastically changed. I went from being someone who was busy all the time either working, or out with friends, to having nothing to do most of the time. I attend school in the mornings from Monday to Saturday (it is a struggle pulling myself out of bed on Saturday mornings), which I might add is very different from school in Canada. We stay in one classroom and the teachers move around and basically lecture for an hour and then leave. It is different from the interactive, stimulating type of school that I am used to, where we have relations with teachers and have time to move our feet and get reenergized between classes. The students here work very hard though and school is quite intense. I am in a linguistic school, which means I am in English, German, French, Latin, History, Italian, Philosophy, and now recently after my insistence some social sciences classes which I am actually interested in. I spend most of my time at school studying Italian or desperately flipping through my best friend (aka my dictionary) trying to keep up. The Italian language is beautiful, and although I am not nearly as far as I would like, I can usually understand most of what people are saying, and I can carry on conversations with horrible grammar, but hey I’m still learning. My afternoons are spent studying the language, biking around town, sometimes meeting up with classmates for coffee and shopping (if they have the time), and sleeping (Exchange is exhausting!!). I have had the chance to see two Italian hockey games, which being Canadian and a huge hockey fan, made me happy. I visited Austria at 2am one Saturday which was awesome and a perfect example of the Italian lifestyle as I was with middle-aged adults who had energy and I was the one who was sleeping on the car ride home. On Saturdays (I have stopped calling them weekends), I meet friends in town, go to the discoteca, go to VERY fancy birthday parties, or other various activities.
These last two months have been incredibly hard as I am not adjusting as quickly as I hoped or as quickly as others around me. I am a very independent person and it is hard for me to rely on others to do everything for me. I feel like a different person here, someone much quieter and more reserved, which for anyone who knows me, is basically the polar opposite of my usual personality. I am staying optimistic that once I am more comfortable with the language and the people around me, which will start feeling more like myself, and less like an outsider. Although these feelings are challenging, I think, in the long term, they are preparing me for a little thing we like to call Real Life. Ciao a tutti!
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