Just Say No (to Chinese food in Rome)

Can't believe I've been in Italy for more than a week now.

After doing research today, I decided to go to this Chinese restaurant nearby since I am getting tired of pasta and panini and pizza and wanted to see what Chinese food was like in Rome. It was terrible. It was beyond terrible, it was just bizarre. First, Italian accented with Chinese is just incomprehensible to me. Second, the food was just wrong. Imagine Panda Express on their worst day and you might come close. They didn't even give me rice! They charged 2euro for white rice (which was soggy, I didn't even know rice could be soggy). At least I came a little under my daily budget for food (which is good because pizza is more expensive than one would think), but then I splurged on gelato on the way home.

I'll probably spend like 100euro just on gelato here. I have some promising leads on my paper, including looking at not only Medieval marriage and property laws, but also contemporary, just to see in what direction the trend tends to move. It's not exactly science, but it might offer some insight.

Enough on my paper. More on Italy.

I think I've finally recovered from the culture shock, although some days are worse than others for homesickness. The people here are generally very friendly, and they don't seem to be rude to Americans at all. (And it's very obvious by how I speak Italian that I'm an American, although I have gotten down "Buon giorno" and "Grazie" pretty well). The weirdest thing is that everythign closes for a few hours in the afternoon, and that restaurants don't open until 12:30pm usually. I'm almost always starving by then, since the typic Italian breakfast is a croissant and espresso. (Obviously, I'm also hyped up from being cooped up reading about ancient Roman law and too much caffeine intake.)

It is a bit lonely to be here all by myself. The days are not so bad, when I'm busy with work, but eating alone gets really old after a few meals. Especially since the Italians take really long meals. Antipasto, pasta, main meat dish and then coffee. This means like one and a half to two hours sitting by myself, reading my guide book. It's true that Italy is for Lovers. I get jealous everytime I see couples walking around.

Speaking of which, I gave someone else directions today! It's really funny how much delight I get out of this one little thing. As I'm typing this, I'm watching Reality Bytes (Ben Stiller, Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke) dubbed in Italian and I really want a Big Gulp from 7/11. I really want some Five Guys too... The Italians are obsessed with American television and anime. I swear they have Charmed on like twenty four hours a day on this one channel.