Living in Italy-the funny little things

So I have been living in Italy for three weeks now and experience new things every day. I'll start by telling the funny things.

Most Italians use gas instead of electricity because electricity is so expensive. The problem with this is I have never used a gas stove and at first was very scared to use one. It sparks, smells like gas..so you never know when its going to blow up the house, and if you turn the heat up, you may start a fire, if you turn the heat too low, you will burn out the flame and then will have to start the long process of turning on the stove again. However, after three weeks I'm starting to get the hang of it. On the contrary, the gas also runs the hot water in the house. For the past week our shower has been ice cold and we don't know why exactly...so apart from taking showers at his parent's house, we have to heat water on the stove in a pot and hope that its enough water to wash with!

Cooking has been an interesting event. I think I'm a pretty good cook, but being here has really tested my knowledge because there are no such things as pre-made anything! There is no self-rising flour, you have to make that. There is no can of cream of chicken, or broth, or brownie mix, or heavy cream, sour cream...the list goes on. If you think that's difficult, there are no measuring tools either. And when you do find some kind of mix that you think you can manage to make a cream of chicken with, you have to figure out the measurement converting from grams to what you remember a cup or tablespoon looks like. I have been experimenting quite a bit...poor Fabio. So before you cook you have to go to the store to buy your ingredients. Well, at the store you better remember to dress to impress. Italians sulk in what they look like everywhere they go! It is a hobbie to them. At the grocery store you will find women wearing high...and I mean at least 4 inches high..heels, jewelry, plastered lip stick, their nice ironed shirts...it's nuts! So when I went to the store I wore my nice little flower dress like a normal American girl would, and I was stared at like I had some target on! ...So at the store if you pick fruit you have to have gloves on. After you pick the fruit or vegetables they have to be weighed by the designated fruit-guy. The milk is stored in the dry food section, and there is no such thing as yellow cheese. Neither is their sandwhich meat...but a bunch of proscuitto for sandwhiches. They do not use salad dressing, but salt and oil on their salads, so there is no salad dressing to be found anywhere! Oh, and one interesting thing is they don't have crabs over here. Ok enough about food.

My daily life so far is from 7-4 Fabio is gone at work so I'm home doing my homework and cleaning the house. Every weekend we go visit his parents and see some of his friends. In two weeks we are going to one of his friend's wedding. I'm excited to see what that is going to be like! About marriage, 90% of Italians marry in their late 20s early 30s. On that note, I have not seen one under-aged pregnant girl or young couple with a child. Every couple that I have met so far with a child is in their 30s. And they all only have one. The Italians have a different view in life in that they don't see the reason to "rush" to have children...and all of the families have an age gap in their children of 4+ years. They like to finance once child at a time. I think this is a responsible thing about their culture. And on the marriage note, if anyone is worried about me..let me set your heart to ease because it is not even Fabio's culture to marry a girl so young without a degree, like me :) and I'm perfectly happy with time because I would like to fully know what I'm getting myself into anyways.

This is all I can write right now, but there will be plenty more! I'll try to post pictures soon

The first week

So this is the start of my blogging about my summer in Italy. So far I am alive and proud of myself of making it here lol. I traveled for more than 17 hours, and when I was in the airport in Rome I thought I was going to die when they started switching my gate numbers. I had no phone connection, they couldn't transfer my money so I couldn't buy a phone card to call Fabio, I was freezing and so exhausted. I was thinking to myself...ok, if I miss my flight Fabio is going to kill me first, my dad is going to kill me second because I didn't transfer money or get a phone card ahead of time like a normal person would...so here I was asking everybody if they spoke English and thank God to my relief everyone knew English!! So...I made it :)

My first day I noticed so many things that were different. For instance, people never hand money to someone else in their hand. They put the money on a dish and then the receiving person takes it. I thought that was peculiar because I was like wow...I thought America was crazy about disease and come to find out..everyone is probably the same :). Another thing is people eat ice cream like they chew bubble gum. I have never seen so much ice cream in my life. No matter what coffee shop you go in (Adriana this is the place for your business) you will find ice cream. And its mostly fruit flavored..not really a lot of chocolate or mixings. A few other differences were no dryers, no dish washers, and they really practice conservation. They don't use appliances or electricity so freely like we do (Papa I'm sure that puts your heart at ease)...they don't use lights unless they absolutely have to and they don't have a lot of things running at one time like the washing machine, oven, blow dryer all at once...

I could go on for quite a while about other things but I've got to keep yall reading so I'm not going to say everything. Anyways, now we are in Germany for Fabio's little 9 year old cousin's communion ceremony. The whole family is here! Almost everyone flew from Italy to Germany for the ceremony so I thought that was pretty loving. Apparently its a huge deal, and I don't really know how it works at home because I never had communion but it was fun to experience. We will be leaving Germany on Wednesday and are going to drive back through Venice which is really called "Venezia"...one thing I learned is that America changes the names of everything and half the stuff we actually do know on the map isn't really called what we call it! haha, so after Venice we'll be back in the South.

Look for my blog every two weeks...I miss and love everyone!

Love ~Jess