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cultural moments
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I describe daily "cultural moments" that take place in my life in Italy. Each "moment" offers an opportunity to explore and analyze cultural differences and, in the process, better understand my own American culture.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'ambiguity'
Its Greek to me
On your mark, get read, GO. The maturità exams have begun. My son arrived at school for the first day at 7:30am and left at 3.30pm during which time he participated in the "prima prova" -- an essay. ...
Bollo time
I paid the car "bollo" or tax today. At least that was the plan. Turns out that someone else had already paid it yesterday -- obviously a mistake. "So, what do I do?" I asked the woman behind the ACI ...
Rules of the game
It is hard to figure out the rules of the game here. Italians are much more flexible than we are in accepting odd rules (odd to us at least) without questioning why. Well, they learn this skill at sch...
Eleven lucky students
In the middle of lunch, after a long pause in the conversation, my son looked up and announced, "today was really a strange day." As my mother antennas went up, I calmly replied, "in what way, strange...
Learning ambiguity
If Italians live comfortably with, and even thrive on ambiguity, how do they learn to do so? We seemed to have missed this lesson as we grew up.My older son passed his maturità exam up in Trento and ...
Living with ambiguity
Yesterday was the fourth of July, American Independence Day! No fireworks, flags flying and barbecue in the backyard for us. The only vaguely American thing we did was a trip to the Auditorium for a c...