Hello everyone! I’m Riccardo, the Italian kid. Being an exchange student here is changing my life, so I just wanted to share with you my experiences and my first impressions for being here in New Jersey.

You may know Italy for pasta, pizza, soccer, mafia…or you may not know Italy at all. Well, be prepared because you don’t know Italy at all. Or, better, Italy is not just these things. I know that a lot of people emigrated from Italy halfway through the 20th century and came to the US. Of course, they brought a few of the Italian mannerisms, but  60 to 70 years later, things in Italy have changed. So the Italy that you may know is the Italy of a half century ago. Surprised? Well, welcome to this article, where I’ll try to make you feel like you are in Italy, if just for some lines or some minutes.

My Italian life is quite different from my American one. First, I want to make you know that I’m a 100% Italian kid who lives in the center of Italy. My town is called Perugia and is about 2 hours from Rome and one and a half hours from Florence. Compared to other cities, it’s not very big. Compared to this city, it’s bigger. My small town reaches 170,000 inhabitants. Living here has made me understand how beautiful a small town can be. It’s not the quantity of population in a city that makes it beautiful. It’s the quality of them; it’s the landscapes that it offers and it’s the life that you live there that matters. Anyway, let’s get back to my lifestyle.

Italian high schools are different from yours. There are different kinds of high schools. Each one has specific classes and you have to attend all of them even if you don’t like them. I frequent a Languages High School, so I study Italian, French, English, German, and Latin. The perk of knowing a lot of languages is that your mind becomes very elastic and you can learn more languages easier. Italian high school lasts from 8 am to 1 or 2 pm. We usually go to school on Saturdays, so we don’t usually hang out on Friday nights, but on Saturdays. Attending an Italian High School is quite hard. Relationships between students and teachers aren’t always good. The school buildings are smaller, the classes are smaller, but the students for each class are greater (20 to 35). There is more homework; we study a lot. That’s the Italian High School priority: to study.

You might be frightened, but trust me: Italy is wonderful. New Jersey is too. They’re just different.

Talking about food… Well, American food is different. Italian American food is different. There are a lot of foods that are very different here. In Italy, pizza with pineapple doesn’t exist. Spaghetti with meatballs doesn’t exist. Mac and cheese is not Italian. We eat 4 to 5 meals per day. Breakfast, which is at around 7:00, is usually sweet. The second breakfast, which is a meal we eat at school around 10.30, is usually salted. Since that schools finish at 2 pm, we have lunch at home. Lunch basically consists of a first dish, which is pasta, or a second dish, which is meat/fish with vegetables. We have a snack at around 5 pm. Dinner is at 8 pm or 9 pm. It depends on the family. Usually dinner is lighter than lunch.

Transportation is different. The majority of the kids in Italy use the bus. Since the driving license can be taken at the age of 18, it’s common for students to go around the city with a public bus. You can get a driving license for mopeds at 14. So, it’s common to see lots of mopeds in the warmer seasons. That doesn’t mean that everyone has a Vespa (Italian moped), though.

Religion is a very strange topic in Italy. The majority is Catholic, since the Pope lives in Vatican City, which is in Rome. When a child is born, the family usually chooses the religion. So, a Catholic child grows up going to the church or reading the Bible even if he/she doesn’t believe. Italy is noticing that a lot of teens don’t believe anymore.

Italian culture seems to be very known over the world, but the real Italian culture is quite different. You may have been to Italy as a tourist, but visiting is different than living.

Thanks for reading!