I love our Italian Friends!

In order for a person to become accustomed to the culture they are living in, they need to experience hands on challenges within that country. I am taking Italian and trying to speak it as much as I can, but I still feel very American.This semester, the coordinators wanted us Illinois students to interact with Italians who attend Roma Tre University and get to know them on a personal level. My group was given 10 Italians to hang out with, but only four of them have been showing up: Flavia, Irene, Alessandra, and Stefano. We love them! They speak perfect English and are easy to talk to. We see each other every few weeks to work on our projects, but last night we decided to go out to dinner as a group. We went to a place called Almacri, a pizzeria that was cheap and very laid back. This place is known for their pizza, so everyone ordered a pizza, but of course I got Penne Arribiata. We enjoyed our food and wine and had a great time getting to know the Italians more.

Today we had to meet up with them again to work on their project. Their project is called, "The Cartoline Roma Tre Project." It is a research project created by the 1st year students enrolled in the language and translation of English . The students have been asked to write brief descriptions, perform video interviews and take pictures for a website about places to visit in Rome and surrounding areas. The website is trying to convince people to explore and visit sites that are not touristic.

Our job is to be the tourist's perspective and help them get an idea of what we think about the places they take us. The Italians can choose any place around Rome to take us, we just have to give feedback on what we like/don't like about the attraction. The project has to be in Italian and English so we are there to help them write grammatical descriptions and titles.

We took a bus from our apartment to EUR, an area about 30 minutes from where we live. We had never heard of this area until today, which was the point. EUR is a residential and business district in Rome. The area was originally planned as the site for the 1942 world fair which Benito Mussolini planned to celebrate twenty years of Fascism, but this event never took place due to World War II. EUR shows a large-scale image of how urban Italy might have looked, if the Fascist regime had not fallen. During the 1950s and 1960s the unfinished Fascist-era buildings were completed. Other new buildings were constructed in contemporary styles for offices and government officials. These buildings were surrounded by large gardens and parks.


We got the chance to walk around the gardens and ponds and take in the nice weather. It was our first time seeing "buildings" and corporate offices. To be honest, I thought they didn't exist in Italy. We were brought to this area to specifically see the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana or Colosseo Quadrato (Square Colosseum.) This building is an icon of Fascist architecture.
The design and structure of the "Square Colosseum" was inspired to celebrate the old Roman landmark: the Colosseum during Fascism. Similar to the Colosseum, the monument has a series of superimposed loggias, six rows of nine arches each. These numbers are considered an allusion to the Fascist dictator: "Benito" having six letters and "Mussolini," nine. At the base are 28 statues representing industries and trades. We were video taped on our opinions about this landmark and whether we would visit this site as a tourist. At the end of our session we stood in front of it and interpreted some of the statues. I was a scientist, my friend Emily was a poet, my friend Andrew was a sailor etc.

These past 24 hours with our Italian friends have been amazing! We are all connecting with them and are forming great friendships. We plan to do dinners once a month and go out with them on occasion. I really hope stay in contact with them when I go back to the states.
Italians are so cool!