My biggest worry about my time in Italy was that I would be lonely. What got me through the hard times in Germany, and what made it truly special were the friends that I met and the time that we shared. When you go to the university it isn’t surprising that you make a lot of friends very quickly. Everyone is around the same age, you are all going through the same thing and you latch on to each other. If you don’t like the people you meet on the first day, who cares you’ll meet a hundred more candidates the next day.
Being a language assistant or doing work experience is completely different though. I’m in an awkward age group, I’m too old for the pupils at the school and the son of my host family, but I’m too young in comparison to the teachers and my host mother. I haven’t had any contact with anyone remotely in my age group.
However I am very lucky the adults around me are equally worried about this and on Tuesday night I received a phone call from my mentor inviting me to go out on Saturday night (last night) with her friend’s daughter and mates. Although I was a little dubious about it, I agreed, what’s the worse that could happen?
The girl, E, is 18 but her boyfriend and the rest of the people who joined us were 21. They took me to get my first legitimate Neapolitan pizza. We shared two pizzas between the ten of us. It was very very delicious. It tasted really fresh and even though the mozzarella still gave it that oily taste, it wasn’t that gunky taste that you get from, say a pizza from Pizza Hut, which just makes you think “Urgh just think of all the fat this contains!”. I was NOT expecting the size of these pizzas though. Check out the second one:
What a monster of a pizza!
After that we drove around for a bit and then ended up in some bar called “Up and Down Coffe” in Pozzuoli. It was a really nice bar, clean, smart and comfortable. If they’d just turned the heating up a little bit more it would have been perfect.
What surprised me about being in the bar was that everyone ordered either a soft drink or a coffee! 3am, and we are drinking coffee…in a bar!?! Personally I think it’s great but I could just imagine some stereotypical Lads on holiday in Naples, partying with the locals and then being taken out for coffee. I don’t think they’d be too impressed.
Anyhoo E recommended a coffee for me to try, and it was gorgeous. A little pricey for such a small cup, but then again that’s Italian coffee all over for you. Great in taste, small in size, high in price. The coffee was called caffè del nonno (con panna). I would most certainly drink it again because it was divine.
But how was my experience with the Italians you ask? They were all lovely. Very friendly and very welcoming. They mostly spoke Italian to me, although a few of them were trying their best to practice some English with me, but I didn’t mind. One of the boys “Meatball” we call him acted as my translator when the conversations were just to complex for anyone to explain in Italian for me. Communicating was not as hard as I’d imagined although I found it difficult to follow conversations between the group. This is probably to due with the speed and the use of slang. I really enjoyed their company and I do hope they were sincere about inviting me out again. I had a great night. I was very tired after it, I was not expecting to eat at 00.30am and come home at 4am, but it was worth it.
Things are going well, I feel very lucky. ☆☆☆
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