Thursday, May 21, 2009

Benvenuta in Italia, Amber!

LITTLE bit of culture shock. 

Number 1: Inter fans. 
This lasted for several DAYS. 

Number 2: Nudity. 

Cultural FYI - There is no word in Italian that means modesty in the sense of wearing modest clothes. 

I guess I didn't notice it sooner being a girl. I understand the naked woman on the signs in the windows of EVERY pharmacy. I understand the naked woman on the advertisements for anti-cellulite cream. (gotta watch that pasta, girls!) I even understand the mostly nude pictures of Victoria Beckham all around the fashion district especially. But what I don't get is why they have to put a naked lady on my italian homework. 


Oh, but that's not all. THAT was yesterday. Today my teacher brought in an entire box of pictures. Most of them were nude. (except the one of the pope, thankfully.) The teacher asked us questions like, "why is she like this?"
Answer: because she was too hot. 
"Why is she covering her chest in this picture?" 
Answer: si vergognava (she was ashamed) 
The next picture was of a nude lady holding the bottle of whiskey with a "mischievous" look on her face. The teacher says, "What is she doing?" 
I was looking up the word for "tramp" in the dictionary but the students beat me to it with the conclusion that "she is drinking whiskey nude while thinking about her boyfriend." 
Then, to solidify our knowledge of passato prossimo, we had to describe all the pictures again using past tense. How nice. The French guy beside me felt right at home. 


 

2 comments:

C.L. said...

oh Amber, that's a bummer! We had stuff like that in my German class. There were plenty of nude pictures, but they were cartoon-y, like the one you have posted. And it was all "normal" for everyone else and had a "perfectly sane explanation" for everything. Welcome to Europe!

Megan Penner said...

Oh my WORD! You must have felt so VIOLATED! Blech! I'm so sorry, Amber!