Rome Week Six

Friday, February 28, my assigned group (my friends) and I traveled to the neighborhood of Flaminio on the outskirts of Rome. For our intercultural class, we were asked to go to some of the scenic parts of the town as well as talk to a local, go out to eat, and spend a total of €20. To begin, we walked over some really old bridges and took pictures (as this is an attractive point of this neighborhood). We then got gelato at a well-known gelatoria and sat for a while to enjoy it. From there, we went to the MAXXI International Museum of Art. The seven of us looked at all of the galleries and then went to dinner. As we had planned out, we ended up eating at a small family-owned restaurant down a narrow side street. A tiny, elderly Italian woman (who did not speak English) owns and operates it by herself- we found out later that her husband had recently passed away and she has taken on all of the responsibilities herself. The place was empty with the exception of our table and one other man, of whom we interviewed. The food was absolutely fantastic, and I would consider it the best Italian food that I have eaten so far. 

         At dinner, it was comical to see everyone’s individual reactions when trying to communicate with the older woman. While some of us are in the Italian language learning class and others are not, there was an obvious struggle to place an order and try to ask her questions about societal stereotypes. I, for example, tried to use the menu and point to what I wanted, and my friend tried to use her broken Italian to explain. Some people looked stressed and flustered when they realized she couldn’t understand them, while others really tried to focus on getting their message across. Laughing our confusion off, our orders came out just as we wanted them. The man sitting at the other table just so happened to be an American turned Italian citizen. When he heard us struggling to communicate, he pulled her aside and explained that we were students at Duquesne. He then proceeded to ask us a bunch of questions about how we like the city, what we were studying, where we’d been to so far, etc. The dinner was wonderful, and it was such an authentically Italian experience (in my opinion). This project was a really great way for us to get out of our comfort zone, and it had amazing results!