melissa grace kreider

This is the fountain in Piazza Santo Spirito right near my apartment. Yeah. It's cold here in Firenze. 

These woman still manage to stay fashionable during this frigid Sunday! 

Non-native Italian, I am writing from the outside looking in. While fashion is a global concept, I’ve noticed a trend predominately in Florence since I’ve been here:  Trash bag coats. I’m sure that there is some technical term that I’m not sure of for this material, but to me it looks like a trash bag. Ladies and gents, I could probably grab one of the trash bags in my apartment, stuff it with cotton balls, cinch it with string and wear it. I saw most of them in black or gray, but it wasn’t until I came across this woman wearing a purple “trash bag coat” that I appreciated it just a fraction. For the record, trash bags can be worn correctly. This woman rocks it!

I have now survived eleven internet-free days. Not completely internet-free, but I do not have constant access to my Twitter feed, Facebook newsfeed, Tumblr dashboard, Foursquare and Dailybooth LiveFeed. I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I was clambering home from a long day of walking through the frigid cold, getting lost, and feeling tired.  All I had eaten was a croissant with an espresso four hours prior but I was hung up on the inability of these ‘cursed’ Italians to provide us with the warm, familiar, awe-inducing glow of Wi-Fi in our apartment. My Docs were pounding the cobblestone. I was staring at the ground in annoyance against the wind (Europe is experiencing a cold snap!) when I hit a patch of light. I kid you not, it was like the light of the heavens. I cast my eyes upward to the sky as all day it had been clouds on top of clouds with a side of cloudiness and I was met with yet another beautiful view. The stretched buildings complete with shutters and wrought iron and their terraces set against the bluer than blue Tuscan sky. Clothes hanging on clotheslines to dry with window boxes full of flowers. For a moment, through my fatigue and stupid first-world problems, I had forgotten where I was.

                Internet is not a priority to the Italians. If it was, my roommates and I would be able to call the internet company and complain about this utter violation of our online lives, snap our fingers, and make the “internet guy” appear at our doorstep, buzzing the doorbell [which only works sometimes]. What I have learned quickly is that Italians do not have the fast-paced, extremely plugged-in lives that we do. They slow down, take a second, speak face-to-face and don’t depend on electricity or internet as heavily as I do. A couple of days ago I was sitting in a café where the circuit blew, followed by darkness. To the Italians, business as usual. To us, completely unheard of! There is not Wi-Fi on every corner, in fact, it’s a mission to find it. This culture is so in-the-moment and out-of-the-web that it made me lose my footing while trying to adapt to Italy.

                Yes, I miss my friends at home and I want very badly to Skype with my family before I go to bed. I crave Twitter and browsing through my Tumblr tags, but being away from Wi-Fi and in Florence, really IN it, forces me to look around and explore. I want to take a leaf out of the Italian’s book and I want to experience life in front of me instead of on a screen. I hope that in the following six months I’ll get a hang of it and bring it back to Akron. Long live the Italian way of life, even after I get Wi-Fi (hopefully)!

                We’ve all heard the term Culture Shock. Once the “Honeymoon” period ends (the awe of being in a new place), you’re left standing in the middle of the street in a city where no one speaks your language. You aren’t around your friends, your family, or your hometown that you know like the back of your hand.  You’ve taken all these things for granted and now they’re gone and you’re thousands of miles away from home, sometimes for the first time ever:  stuck. I’m not going to lie, it’s scary.  

                I arrived and found my apartment, met my roommates and settled in the first night and couldn’t sleep. I was afraid and nervous. I was second-guessing myself and whether I was good enough to be here, if I made the wrong choice. I could hear every noise and Vespa whizzing by outside of our windows. Should I just go home? Will I get my loan money back if I do? Can I drop out of college? I give up, man. I almost called my parents, but I refrained.

I realized that what I was going through was very normal and natural. It was culture shock. I never really believed that it existed, along with jet lag (thought that was a myth too-it’s not), but it is completely normal. Even I, who worked hard for a good year to get here, experienced doubts about why I was here.  I was blessed with a traveler’s mind and-as a sidenote-awesome roommates- my culture shock was over and done with within three days. I am still learning and accepting differences between my culture and theirs, but I’m no longer panicked or doubtful; I’m freaking thrilled!

Everyone told me before I left that I wasn’t going to come back as the same person. That through some miracle that I didn’t know about, this would “CHANGE” me.  Never really being away from home, I just brushed off their comments like swatting away a fly. I couldn’t imagine how something like jetting away, FAR away from Akron  would make me a different person. I have wanted to travel since I can remember, but actually doing it, finally reaching, it really does change you.

I’ve been here for nine days, and I already have learned more, accepted more, and realized more about myself and the world than I have in eighteen years! If this happened in nine days, what’s going to happen in six more months?

Don’t let culture shock or doubts keep you from going abroad! I urge everyone reading this to check into their university’s study abroad program and if you don’t find what you’re looking for, check into an outside, private program! For example, my home university did not have a program fit for my needs, so I decided to travel through Study Abroad Italy.

I have been here for a little over a week and I am already having the time of my life (It seems much longer, I assure you!!). Even the culture shock seems like a thing of the past, now.