Submitted by Hannah Brown on the 2020 winter session study abroad program in Italy sponsored by the Department of English…
When we arrived in our hotel, we took some time to rest before attending our welcome dinner. This was very nice as it gave everyone the chance to meet and talk for the first time. Then, we spent the rest of the week exploring the city of Rome. We visited most of the major monuments, like the Roman Forum and the Colosseum, and also visited the town of Tivoli. Our tour guide, Richard, did an amazing job of telling us the history of the city while mixing in some light humor.
Overall, I really liked our first week in Italy. This was not my first time traveling to another country. I have previously visited Japan and saw many of the major cities on the island. For this reason, culture shock did not have a huge effect on me. When I was in Japan, their culture is centered around respect. Everything they do is done in a way to be respectful to others. In general, people try to talk low in public to limit the disturbance they cause to other people, they take religion very seriously, and they say “thank you” and “sorry,” even if they are doing something for you. This is something very different from American culture, where people tend to be a bit more confrontational. Therefore, coming into European culture where people are more reserved than American culture, it didn’t surprise me that much. Likewise, the food in Japan is very obviously different than what is in the U.S., since fish is the main protein in the diet. Japanese people usually have a very savory breakfast, very different from that of a American breakfast. In Italy, I found that the differences between their food and what I am used to back home to be relatively similar. This idea is something that helped me adjust a lot after my first week here and will hopefully continue to help me as the program continues.
