Ciao Tutti!

So my program is almost over. Today I took my Italian final and I think it went ok, idk, apperntly though I have been using more French than ever since the beging, but I think that was because I was aware that it was french, now I think that it is Italian, make sense? like I can't speak french anymore because it all comes out Italian.

But thats not the point of this blog, the point I wanted to make was about my classes, and how wonderful they have been. I mean, ok, they were hard and stressful and most of the time I didn't really want to go, but I feel so much smarter that I am going to go home sounding so pretencious, but not beause I want to sound so, but just because it was so fascintating to me and I have so many cool facts. SO I decided to write a little sysnopsis of each class, cool things I have learned etc. / this will also hlep me with my finals. haha!

OK so I will start with my least favorite, which was my major unfortunatly, but I think it was more of the teacher, not really the subject, I feel like this could be sooo much more interesting than it really comes off which is unfortunate.

Well this was the Anthropology of Italy, which can be a hard subject in context of Italy as a whole because Italy is soo diverse. Italy wasn't even what we know of today as the unified "italy" but rather a bunch of nation states within the penisula. So each nation had its own language and culture that when mixed it became hard to mesh. However, the meshing is not like trying to mesh Nigera, they all have the basic relgion and basic latin routes so it isn't like they are trying to seperate but there is still those pedujuces. haha almost like California, where the North is so much diffrent from the south, but just a little bit more diverse. For example, in the south is where all the country farming people are and are thought of as the "uneducated" people. and the North is where places like Milan and Rome and Venice are and are thought to be more "cultured," in the sense that they are wise and sophisticaed. However in my experience even though there was a lot more to see and do in Nothern Italy, I felt like Southern Italy had soooo much more culture to it, in the sense that I could actualy feel the latin routes and it just seemed more "real" to me. However, this is not really what the course was about, just kind of a background. But we talked a lot about how Italy functions as a nation. What were sterotypes and what were major themes and concepts throughout the penisula. For example, music. How music evolved in Italy, how at one point they were listening to this weird instument that made this weird noise, and how we in our western society would consider that just noise, where those in the south acutaly consider this music. (or did anyways). and how the faishion of Italy evolved, like how italy is considered one of the fashion capitols of the world and how it is more conservative than France and how italians idolize these fashions. And just a whole bunch of random topics that I think could have been tought better.

Then there was travel writing in Italy:

This class was really interesting in terms of the disscussion topics. Sometimes it got pretty monotonous though. We basicaly went over travel through Italy starting from the 18th century to present. Which is topics like the grand tour. It was really interesting learning about the grand tour and how men from england would travel through france and Italy to get Cultural expeiences and be at the places of the grand masters, etc. and how Italy has always been a place that people consider to travel when picking deistinations. There is something about Italy that is soooo alluring, like now its the boys and the food and this feeling that once your in Italy you will be surrounded by this magic that you can't find anywhere else. Which is true when you travel here for thousands of dollars and its a vacation, but when you live here, the glamor begins to fade after a while. Then there are topics like what is an anuthentic experience, like an example is on one of the main roads in rome there is a pizza place called VIP or very italian piazza, and one must ask themselves, how Italian can it really be if the title of the resturant is in english? make sense? how tourism has changed Rome, or italy. Like how much of a culture can you really learn or apperciate when you are in like this travel bus with people who speak english and are from the US and dont really get that they are in another country with diffrent cultures. But then can one ever truely understand it? I basicaly concluded through my own experiences that, ok, tour guides are complicated because they are sooo useful for some people, I think that some people need to get out but just don't have the savy travler skills and at least they are seeing these places. But I don't think that these people can say that they understand or can begin to understand a diffrent culture. They can make judgements, that are of course extremly bias, but they can't understand the diffrences with out exploring and meeting people who live here and truely just embrassing a culture. It doesn't mean that you nessarily have to live there, but at least try to meet people and talk to them and find out the diffrences so you can outline the similarities kind of thing.

THEN there was urban which I will add later because I am about to fall asleep...