First Year Italian prepared me for False Friends. Romanzo may sound like romance, but is actually a novel. One who is annoiato is bored, not annoyed, just as something noioso is boring, not noisy. And i parenti don’t mean parents, but relatives. I knew that I would recognize some of these little word tricks during my time in , but also stumble into others along the way.

“I won’t tell Laura’s boss about her wicked nature because I was educato bene,” my Language Partner declared over his Sex on the Beach cocktail while lamenting his breakup with his ex-ragazza. I knew that for years he had been studying art history, but how had staring at Renaissance paintings educated him about love? I wondered. A page through my Italian dictionary revealed that educato bene means well-raised, or well-bred. 

A few weeks ago my host sister accompanied me to a much-needed hair appointment with the family parrucchiere (hairdresser). After a wet hour of shampooing, conditioning, cutting, styling, and blow-drying, my hair had never looked better. “Adesso i tuoi cappelli sono molti morbidi,” Greta said as we walked back, running her hands through my product-dense locks. Is she saying my hair looks morbid? I was shocked. But no, she was giving me a compliment— morbido is soft. 

This past weekend my friends and I sampled the endless free food at Florence ’s annual Artigianato festival— pasta, cheese, cannoli, limoncello, olive oil, bread, and chocolate— and I salivated over organic broccoli paste spread on crackers. “Vorresti assaggiare il sugo con i peperoni?” the vendor asked me. “No, grazie,” I replied simply, “Sono una vegetariana.” His look of such puzzled confusion made me realize that peperoni are not the circular pieces of meat sprinkled over typical American pizzas, but hot peppers. 

Yes, after nearly four months in Florence I am still making these funny mistakes. Other false cognates that have sent me to wordreference.com are sensibile (sensitive), confetti (sugar-coated almonds distributed at weddings), and finalmente (eventually)— but decoding their hidden meanings is just part of the excitement of living in a foreign place.

Nothing about being a study abroad student in is easy, except perhaps, making your friends and family jealous, getting a great panoramic snapshot, and eating well. I have come to believe it is the daily challenge just to get by that gives me the love-hate relationship I have developed with Firenze . Back home I consider myself to be a pretty level person. I do not tend towards outbursts of tears or waves of adrenaline, but this is definitely not the case in Florence . In any given week I can be on top of the world (or Duomo) thanking my lucky stars and enthusiastically exploring the city, or I can be an exact replica of Dante in Santa Croce, stony and scowling, cursing the exchange rate and retreating back to my apartment. I was in the latter mood about a week ago as a result of lack of sleep, overdose of two and half hour class, and that signature of Tuscan spring, rain! I stared longingly at my cozy apartment across the piazza from where I was standing, and angrily down at my soaked flip flops (maybe the Italians are onto something with that whole boot concept), but I had a friend’s birthday just a few days away and I had promised to make a reservation at a restaurant by that afternoon. “Stopping in” to my apartment meant certain failure for this plan as I knew I would not reemerge, so I readjusted my hood and grumbled my way a block over towards the restaurant. As I walked up to the door I recalled one of the only phrases I retained from an Italian word of the day calendar my mom had bought for me the previous Christmas. “Hello” the waiter greeted me, I could barely be seen from under my rain soaked hood and he still automatically knew I was American! I had that temporary moment of “what’s the use?” that seems to strike me every time I try to rally myself to communicate in Italian, but I decided this wasn’t just about me today. How could I let my mom’s $10.99 go to waste? “Buona sera, vorrei prenotare un tavolo,” I recited in perfectly calculated Italian. He smiled and matched me with slow, well articulated, and generously one worded questions. Quando? Quanti? After two years of Italian I am proud to say that I was at least able to rattle off the weekday name, time, and number of people before exchanging “grazie”s and booking it out the door before my luck ran out.

Walking that block back home I felt elated, truly and purely. My heart was beating hard and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, but there was something else; a full body rush that one just can’t get from reserving a table back home. I had made contact. For anyone reading this who is not abroad this all must sound ridiculous or wildly exaggerated, but I promise it is not. The rollercoaster ride of studying abroad is not just based around seeing the Amalfi Coast or the David. Some of its sharpest twists and turns are set by one’s first experience grocery shopping, or trying to find the ‘@’ button on a European keyboard, or, yes, even trying to reserve a table for a friend’s birthday! Actually, now that I think about it, even those first few things I mentioned aren’t as easy as I thought. battling with the ever cutting out Skype in my apartment combined with the two hours it can take to load pictures online can make it nearly impossible to brag to friends and family, snapping that perfect sunset picture requires fighting droves of tourists and my own burning calf muscles up the steps to Piazza Michelangelo, and who can afford to eat out these days?! Yet walking home, soaking wet, with only the promise of homework and pasta with frozen vegetables ahead of me, I am reminded that it really is, somehow, all worth it.

My mom warned me about the hill towns. And as I rode past, gliding by way of train from Rome to Florence in my first 24 hours in Italy, I figured I knew what she meant but not until I actually got there did I know quite the effect that Siena would have on me.

This weekend I took a trip to Rome for the first time with my roommates. We did everything a tourist would do; we had the guided walking tour to all main Piazzas’ in the city and a guided tour of the Coliseum and the Forum. Of course I know that I’m a tourist when I go on these weekend trips, but let’s be honest, no one likes to look like one especially if you are living in Florence and trying very hard not to be one. The walking guided tours wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for those obnoxiously obvious headsets. And I am convinced that we were cursed with these headsets because, while spending the morning at the Vatican we were witness to several tours and all were wearing headsets while each tour guide had a colored loofah designating where they were walking. Now naturally we shouldn’t have found it hysterical while visiting the eternal city so I don’t find it ironic that we had to be cursed with the same tragic features of tourists.  But it was not just the headsets that made this trip memorable but it was the ever popular saying, “When in Rome.”  Oh yes from the moment we arrived till the moment we departed the saying was spoken like it was going out of style.  So I started to think, what makes Rome so appealing?

Is it the many historical attractions roamed by tourists daily, the arrogance of a big city lifestyle, the streets that line themselves with night life attractions,  the metro system, or is it the city within a city aspect?  Whatever it may be that makes this great city of Rome so attractive, one may never know. As for me, well you know what they say, “When in Rome!”

As I walked down San Lorenzo with my Ipod on just loud enough that I can hear the sounds surrounding me in all directions. It feels good like a scene from a movie. I feel a wave of satisfaction wash over me as it hits me I'm actually here. I did so much to get here and haven't spent much time actually enjoying that I am here. Just going from one worry to the next. Got to go to the market. Got to go to class. Why don't we have hot water? Where can I get stamps? How do I send postcards? Well, I think you can get the idea.

I often walk around with my camera looking for stuff to shoot for my photography class. With my camera around my neck I feel like a target for unwanted attention. I sometimes want to scream "I'm not a tourist I'm a student!" I feel as a tourist I am the enemy, but I mean no harm. I just want to enjoy all the things that they live with on a daily basis. That they walk by everyday and don't take a second glace at. I guess I came to Firenze for a new point of view.

To discover who one is, I believe, experience is needed. This experience, as many ascertain, can deliver itself in several ways and will hit us at any time. Family, friends, books, food, art, cities, countries, our own imaginations: these are but a few of the copious accounts, which create the experience of living. Thus providing a genuine education and possibly—for the lucky few—the discovery of who one truly is.

My experiences, thus far, have led me to Florence. While this is not my hometown, country or continent, for the proceeding four months, Florence will be where I lay my hat. My possessions have been left in Houston, Texas, where I spent the first seventeen years of my life.

I am the son of a couple who has been married for 26 years. My mother, a musician, is now a schoolteacher. Her parents’ first date was to a combined rodeo and car auction in Kerrville, Texas. My grandfather was a milkman at the time. My grandmother came from Birmingham, Ala., to visit her brother. The rodeo and car auction ended, and two weeks later they were married.

My father—while having a lovely singing voice is far from being a musician—is the president of our family business. A business established after my father’s parents left Europe during the Holocaust. My grandfather is 89 years old and still goes into work everyday.

I have one sibling, a sister two years older than myself. She is a professional musician, playing viola in a string quartet. She is best violist I know and easily one of the coolest. As with my sister, I respect my family and believe much of who I am today is due to them—for better or worse.

While this is my initial journey to Italy, it is not my first encounter with traveling. As a child, flying wasn’t in my family’s travel agenda. Road trips were at the heart of nearly every vacation. This, however, wasn’t due to a phobia of heights or small compartments or tiny bags of peanuts. No, it was due to my parents desire to provide a window seat to what we couldn’t learn in a textbook. Journeys from Texas to California to Toronto to hiking the Appalachian Trail to bargaining with street vendors form Mexico to New York was my youth. An adolescence I intend to continue and never forget.

After graduating high school—where I attended an arts school, studying music—I left for college in Auburn, Ala. Entering as a psychology major, I promptly acknowledged the world of Skinner, Chomsky and Wundt was not the world for me; as did my professors. After my second semester, any contemplation, deliberation or inspiration I could muster was directed towards writing. Journalism and English would be the focus of my collegiate academe.

I have studied abroad once before, in London. This experience was the first time I felt I could do anything. Not in the sense of Superman or the Pope—tragically—but in the sense of me. In a world of opportunity, rejection and the spacious ability to aspire, I felt scared, brave, lonely, suffocated, hungry and full, and I couldn’t get enough of it. I expect my time in Florence to produce new feelings and memories I can take to the next skip of life. It is an experience I am eagerly waiting to unravel.

I grew up an Italian American, in a predominantly Italian area with others who felt more Italian than American. Every Sunday my family would have a huge feast around 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We’d eat pasta and drink wine, and like here in Italia the salad would come last. Whenever my ego would get out of control I was checked with comments from the kids at school like “loud mouth ghinny” or “wop’, “dego”. I grew up feeling Italian without having ever been to Italy, and not even being able to speak Italian. The best I could manage was Itanglish, which is an immigrant mix of different Italian dialects and English (it’s what they speak on the Sopranos).

When I decided to come to Florence to learn the language and see the old country I was surprised to find out that here I am, in fact American, not Italian. “But my great grandparents were born in Italia.” I protested to a group of Italians that I had met. I was convinced that they where judging me for wearing white socks and having poor fashion sense, and secretly hurt that they didn’t consider me Italian. Perhaps I didn’t explain my self well enough, my Italian is what they would call maccheronico (Italian with a thick English accent), or maybe they just couldn’t see outside of La Toscana. I wanted to tell them about the Brazilian descendants of Italian immigrants who go to the United States and call themselves as Italians, not Brazilians or Americans, and that the same is true in Argentina and Uruguay.

There are little Italys all across the planet, and even though the food isn’t as good as back in the old country or the style of dress may be different the people who live there are still Italians. Our blood is the same and we will always be connected to this country and it’s people.