The other night, I was walking with Eli and Sarah back from town (where I got some yummy dried kiwi and kind of weird dried eggplant from a street vendor) when a woman stopped us and began to ask for directions.
Before she could finish (and before we had said anything), her husband pulled her along, laughing a bit and saying "Non sono italiane" ("they aren't Italian").
We tried to protest--we've lived here for two weeks, we speak Italian, we can help!--but he had already made up his mind.
It left us wondering...what is it that makes someone appear instantly foreign in Italy? Not everyone here fits the dark hair dark eyes image, and as this is a vacation town we've seen diverse-looking people from all over the country. Couldn't we just have been northerners? We're going to start paying more attention to the way Italians have of carrying themselves, to their attitudes and their mannerisms, and try to figure out what it is that we're missing.
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| Lei è certamente italiana |
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