Culture shock

A big part of travelling abroad is dealing with culture shock.  It’s a banana banana but doesn’t affect everybody but can be harmful for some. Florence itself is a very different city than any other city I’ve been to before. it’s very old and well preserved which is different than the modern city of  San Francisco, which is where I come from.  While there is so much history in the city of Florence it’s also very different than Boston,  sense the history is so different and dates back way earlier than America was even founded. there are a lot of differences in the way Florence is compared to the cities I’m used to.  Something I thought was very interesting was how in Italy they don’t care for ice or air-conditioning in most stores or restaurants. most of the locals just deal with the heat and it can get up to 100°F in the summer.  So it was very hard to keep cool, but eventually you just adjust to the heat. Before I left to study abroad, I read a whole packet that dealt with culture shock and I personally did not experience any of this. I have been to Europe before so I had an idea of the culture I was getting into and well the countries are so different but I was easily assimilating into the Italian lifestyle.  It was surprising how many people didn’t speak English, and  how much Italian was spoken in every day places, but taking an italian language class helped me cope with this a lot.  Other than that, I had an easy time getting used to the Italian culture with no issues.