Viva Rome!

Many people have asked me to describe Rome in one word. Noisy. There is a constant noise or soundtrack to the city. While some have mistakenly compared it to New York City in America I disagree somewhat. You see there is a lull in the noise level in New York. There does not ever seem to be any lull in noise in Rome however. This can be quite upsetting to someone who lives in a quiet neighborhood. In fact I could not get much sleep while i was living there because there was a constant noise of car alarms, garbage trucks, people arguing outside and the ever present ambulance sirens that seem to pervade every corner of the city.

Now some students could easily adapt to the noise level. I found it kind of hard to do so. I guess even though I grew up in a suburb in America I was not ready for the drone of the city noise.  I am sure after time i would have adapted to the noise after more time in the city but just one month was not enough.

So if you are going to Rome and are going to actually live in an apartment then I would highly recommend buying ear plugs or some sort of white noise machine to make it easier for you to sleep. Some found that using their iPods with speakers a great way to fall asleep. I would recommend using this technique as you can more easily fall asleep to something that you are familiar with then these other distractions.

As I said I like Rome but it is not all wonderful. There are points of contention i have with the  city and the noise level is by far the biggest one.

Many of the students in Rome have complained about the graffiti on all the buildings. You see many of those that complain are usually Americans or from other countries outside of Europe. In America, Canada and even Australia and New Zealand graffiti is a symbol of gang activity and a run down neighborhood. In Italy, Greece and some of the other European countries these sprayed on symbols are just simply one neighborhood communicating with another one. Or in other cases these are just one sports team fan club dissing or making fun of another sport team fan club. These are quite common and do not mean anything bad or a symbol of a run down neighborhood.

However, with this being said I do not like the graffiti on the buildings like my other American counterparts I think it is a blight on the city and makes the city look really ugly and bad. I wish they would clean it up because it does not convey a good image for Italy. Now I know we are just visiting and when in Rome you should be like the Romans but I can not help to want to clean up the city a bit more.

This is the conflict you will experience in a foreign land. You will want to impose your believes and attitudes on the others who actually live there. This is not a good thing to do by any means. In fact it is quite wise to try to assimilate as much as possible in the community as you can. How you can do this is sometimes difficult but possible if you make the effort. My point with this post is to convey a sense of conformity that you will have to adopt when in a new land. You will have to suppress your biases and beliefs as much as possible in order to fit in. Enough said about that. Ciao.