Within my first weeks in Milan, I became quickly acclimated to the city atmosphere and used as much of my time as possible to learn about the city—and country—I am living in for the summer. I expected to encounter cultural differences going about my day-to-day, engaging with members of my lab or strangers in public spaces, but I don’t think I could have anticipated the process one must undergo in order to comfortably adjust to a foreign environment. Italy is for the most part very similar to the United States in many practices, however I initially got tripped up on many of the small nuances present in Italian culture that a textbook could never prepare me for. The largest cultural changes for me came in the form of basic communication which flowed into personal interactions. Communication is the foundation for so much cultural growth, so overcoming the barrier of my limited language knowledge is something I still need to continue working on, but over the short time I’ve been present in Italy, I can already see the improvements beginning to take shape.
When my foreign language internship cohort was sent to our selected locations, one thing we were taught to identify during our time abroad was “critical incidents” where our cultural expectations and the actual cultural structure of our new country did not line up. These critical incidents are an extremely valuable opportunity to improve our intercultural skills and continue to grow as global citizens. Communication in general continued to be a challenge, especially in the context of customary greetings. In the US, I’m used to greeting people in passing with a brief smile and continuing to wherever I’m going. In Italy, my experience has been a lot more cordial. In my first week, I would walk past the members of my lab that I knew who appeared to be going somewhere, flash a quick smile, and keep walking past. I only learned after watching other interactions between graduate students that it was unusual to exchange an unspoken greeting, and instead a verbal acknowledgment is much more common and is a respectful way to acknowledge anyone you might know. It also isn’t atypical to stop and have a brief conversation. For me, after several years of college, I’m much more used to nodding to my peers on the quad and continuing to walk to my destination, and it took me a while to realize that my peers here in Milan were wanting me to verbally engage in order to exchange hellos whenever we encountered each other. Small components of the relationships I’m cultivating here help me fit better with the change in culture that I have the privilege of observing this summer.
Overall, these small changes in my life throughout my experience in Milan are helping me to become a member of a greater global community, and learning from these critical incidents through the guidance of my Italian peers provides a priceless experience for any language learner.
