After a layover in Philadelphia and two weeks of jury duty in Minneapolis, I’m back in St. Louis! The Wash U campus feels strangely serene, surrounded by residential neighborhoods instead of the buses, shops and pubs outside Trinity. The streets are oddly wide, the sidewalks oddly empty — instead of weaving through crowds, encountering another pedestrian is suddenly an ordeal necessitating nods and eye contact and wondering if I recognize them.
Last Saturday, Costa Rica managed a miracle: Uruguay, the fourth ranked team in the world, lost to Costa Rica 3 to 1 for the first time in World Cup history.
Through my internship, I have noticed that one of the most significant differences between Italian and American businesses are that American businesses are focused primarily on the short-term, while Italian ones are concerned with the long-term. One day when I came into work, my boss was in the process of contacting each person that had been on a tour that day. When I asked what had happened, he said that one of their tours had ended up with seven people. LivItaly Tours promises tour groups of a maximum of six people, so my boss fe
Before coming to Rome, I knew I wanted to take part in an internship. At the time, I was focused on finding a job working with a travel and food agency. But once I arrived in Rome and saw the presentation for internships and social action internships led by Simona, the internship teaching at a Montessori school caught my attention. I talked with her and decided that this internship may be a better fit for what I want to do in the future. I have recently taken a strong interest in education.
Before even beginning my internship, I must have thought of a million reasons why doing it would prove to be entirely too overwhelming and too time consuming. Fortunately, Simona, the internship coordinator at IES Abroad Roma, did not let me make a final decision without visiting my internship site first. And surely enough, after my first visit, during which I met the director of Casa Famiglia, I somehow felt and knew that I needed to do this.
Studying abroad in a foreign country is an amazing enough experience on its own. I truly believe, however, that I had managed to create my own unique experience based on the type of internship I had the opportunity to have. Working at Galleria Emmeotto taught me an incredible amount about the Italian workplace, contemporary art galleries, and personal relationships in general. I would not change one aspect of my internship, even some of the negative aspects that I had to overcome over the course of the semester.
After a few weeks at my internship with Galleria Emmeotto, I began to pick up on a few differences based on working habits and attitudes in comparison with those of the United States. While we discussed some of these differences in the classroom, it was easier for me to pick up on them while actually at the internship itself. One thing that stood out to me the most was the attitude about work ethic and time management in Italy in comparison with the United States.
The biggest institutional difference between American and Italian public schools is one that I was unaware of before beginning at Visconti. The permanent nature of class in Liceo, where students stay in the same room all day at school with the same group of students all five years, has educational and social effects. Although this system fosters a stronger bond between students, it also gives them less independence. Most of the people I have met in Italy have told me they remained good friends with their high school peers.
The past evening, I met my boss for wine and cheese at a new enoteca called Litro. Our meeting was both an opportunity to meet person-to-person, as we rarely did, and to give my boss the chance to visit this newly opened popular spot. While we were dining together, I was able to hear my boss’s cultural perspective on Italy and her experience working in Italy. Similar to the discussions we had in class, she described how hard it is to start a business in Italy. Her own tour company is considered a Californian agency, rather th
My assignment for this week was to write two different gelato articles. Both my bosses emailed me asking for blog posts on the best gelato in Rome. One boss sent me a list of her five favorite gelaterias and told me to visit each, take photos, and write about each shop. My other boss emailed me asking for a blog post on my nine favorite gelato flavors. Both of these assignments were challenging in their own way. To do the first assignment, I had to map out where each gelateria was, get there, take pictures, and research