Culture Shock #02 and #03

I am SO FREAKING HUNGRY.

Culture Shock #02: The past few times that I have been grocery shopping, I haven't seen anything that looks remotely edible and I don't know what most of it is. Don't think I would even if I could translate the descriptions on all of the packages. Which brings me to Culture Shock #03: even after four entire semesters of Italian, I can barely function over here. I am not confident whatsoever in my speaking abilities and I've forgotten most of my vocab even though I have four semesters worth of notes with me (and have looked through them several times).

My TA Chelsea told me this would happen and in order to speak well and or fluently, I'd have to get used to being embarrassed and get over it. Ugh. Why can't this just come naturally? I embarrass myself all the time at home, and I have absolutely no problem with it. But back to culture shock #2:

I miss my American snacks. I miss frosted flakes, I miss salted Ritz crackers, I miss PB&J, I miss salted butter (apparently they have it but I can't find it), I miss red meat--this is a big one for me. In the giant Mercato Centrale near the Piazza di San Lorenzo, they have a ton of meat, but it's still in animal-shaped form... I don't even know what to ask for--but it's all pork. Pork is HUGE over here, and don't get me wrong, I love pork, but where's the beef? I like my beef tenderloin, my ground beef, my strip, flank and any other kind of steak you can possibly think of.

I also have to add that I am not anywhere close to a vegetable person. I've tried 'em all and they're all disgusting. So I skip the vegetable portions of the markets and inside the stores. Fruit is fantastic--but they only sell what's in season. So I bought a whole load of oranges and clementines and kiwi. But I'm not a "meal-eater" per say... I like to snack. Very often, and every day. I don't have popcorn, I don't have recognizable chips, energy or granola bars. I don't have meat to make a small sandwich, and already, I'm sick of pasta because I can't make it like the restaurants do. I would love to have seafood pasta, gnocchis, raviolis, pasta carbonara, anything and everything, if I knew how to cook it and where to get the ingredients.

The final straw for me is the coffee. I stood in front of the shelf full of different kinds of caffe for an entire half hour and I walked away with nothing. I know what's espresso but I don't know if I can buy that for the "coffee maker" we have in our apartment. I don't know if the ground coffee (it looks like actual coffee) is caffe americano or not. I wouldn't even know if it was good coffee to buy or not, because we have SO MANY KINDS of coffee in the US, people develop preferences and then they're screwed when they leave the country.

Now that I've vented my frustrations on to the internet, I feel a lot better and I'm making myself a promise that I will try my hardest to learn to speak Italian, and to give myself a break because it's only my first week here. I have three more months in beautiful Florence, Italy and I'm going to make the most of it. So from now on, I'm going to try to not complain about things because I'm in Italy, and my family and I worked hard to get me here. From now on, I'm going to relax and only stress about school work, because that's the typical college student way of life.