My Arrival Upon Milan
Shortly after I got off my plane, I found myself in Milan, Italy! It was very exciting to realize that I was actually going to live in Milan for about four months. I never lived outside of Ohio for very long, especially out of the country, and being in Italy was a good reminder that the world is a very, very big place.
I got out of the airport and found many cabs waiting for me. I did watch the movie “Taken” right before I came, so I made sure that I did not share my cab with any attractive European men. Stranger danger I told myself. Once I hopped in a cab, I gave the driver directions to my dorm, and shortly after we began talking. He immediately knew I was from America because of my accent, and also because of how little Italian I knew. I have to admit, it was rather embarrassing not knowing much, if any Italian, because I felt like I supported the stereotype that “Americans don’t care to learn other languages because they think everyone speaks English”. Of course I don’t think that is true, but I am aware that it is a negative stereotype we bare. But the driver didn’t seem to care too much, and I had a nice discussion with the cab driver. He told me about the history of the Italian language, as well as the history of the city and how the city was built. I was amazed at how much history there was to the Italian culture, and Milan itself. Comparing the history of Italy which dates back from thousands of years, with America’s recorded history of only two-hundred years is quite a big difference. Until now, I never really thought about how young United States was.
Next thing I knew, I found myself at Arcobaleno Residence, my dorm. I was expecting there to be a very quick and organized sign-in system, however, I had to wait in line for about an hour while people ahead of me in line slowly filled out their paperwork. I compared this with my move in experience at OSU. At OSU, although there were thousands of new freshmen moving into the dorms, it was a very structured and organized process, that took very little time (in comparison with how many people were moving in). This is one of many future instances where I realized that in Italy, it sometimes takes a long time to process and file things. This is something I had to adjust to, because in America, everything seemed to get done much faster.
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