So last night I went out with my roommates for Mexican food. Which was highly amusing. The italians, it seems do not eat what we would call "ethnic" food often. Of the five of us that went (me, my two roommates and two friends), two had never before tried mexican food and when the decidedly mild salsa was delivered, all four exclaimed at how hot it was. The photo above shows the five of us. Gabriella is the one with wavy blond hair and Maria is the one on my right. AnnaMaria is the one with long black hair in the front, she's a friend of Maria's and the other girl is a friend of AnnaMaria's. The food was passable, though not particularly authentic, but pricy. The five of us managed to rack up a 100 euro tab ordering drinks and once entreè apiece. Then we went out and walked around the piazza for a few hours. The norm here seems to be to eat late on saturday (our food came around 10:15) then just walk around and see who you see. As Maria and I were standing outside a bar waiting for the others to buy lotto tickets (the lotto is HUGE here), a big group of loud, drunk americans came tromping and stumbling by and my roommate said, "ahh, those are your peers" because she heard them speaking english. Slightly hurt, I replied that all americans are not my peers which launced us into a long discussion about cultural steriotypes and how they are proponed. She told me that the foreign exchange students (particularly those from America) are causing a problem in Ferrara by getting drunk every weekend and making a ton of comotion and occationally property damage. This steriotype is easily riconfirmed because it's the loud drunk americans that everyone sees because they're loud. How sad, a vicious circle from which there is no escape. Grow up people.
1 comment:
The picture looks like fun! (even if the food was only semi-Mexican) And way to stick up for the "non-stereotypical" Americans (the cool ones, I'd say). That's too bad that, as per usual it seems, the entire US gets a bad rap because of some people behaving badly. I wonder if we do the same thing, though - judging a whole cultural group by what we see in a few people. Hopefully not, but I feel like that mindset is pretty pervasive in society. Guess we can only do our best.
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