The greatest part of doing a study abroad programming is experiencing living in a new place. One of the worst parts is trying to adjust to a different culture. Most of the transition to Italian life has gone well for me. I miss certain things about the U.S., such as air conditioning everywhere you go and peanut butter, but there are perks of being in Italy that make up for things I miss. Gelato, for example, is everywhere and I have been eating more of it than I should. Fresh fruit is cheaper and tastes better, and my legs are in great shape from all the walking.
One aspect of Italian life that I will not miss and have had the most trouble adjusting to is the trash schedule. Recycling is very important here, and recyclables need to be sorted and put out in different trash bags on different days. Glass, plastic, and metal goes in one bag. Paper and cardboard goes in another. Organic waste has a different bag from all other non-recyclable materials. It should be a simple matter of sorting as you throw things away and then remembering what goes down on which day. If only it were that simple.
I expected that there would be an awkward period learning the trash schedule. What I didn't count on was that none of the instructions we were given seem to be correct. The company that owns our apartments put a binder full of instructions and useful information in each apartment. In it there is a schedule for the trash. However, above our trash cans in the kitchen there is another set of instructions for the garbage. This set is different from the one in the binder. My roommates and I discovered that the schedule in the kitchen was the correct one. That is, it was correct until last Thursday when apparently the trash schedule was changed. We didn't realize it at first, because we missed the instructions posted downstairs at the entrance to the building. Because we hadn't noticed we were putting the wrong trash outside for a few days. It wasn't picked up and then we had to carry it back upstairs where it sat, smelling pretty disgusting because of the lack of a.c., until I noticed the new instructions. (The instructions were always posted downstairs, so we hadn't realized they were any different.)
I think that we finally have the schedule down, but in the meantime I have had to carry trash up and down the stairs more times than I would like to admit. My roommates and I have started referring to the situation as the "Trash Saga" because every day we have some new story about taking out the trash. Sometimes it's a comment on whether the trash was picked up on time or whether we saw trash from anyone else in the building. (Sometimes I swear we are the only apartment to put out our trash.) Other times we have a story about our trash bags being cut open to determine if we have the right kind of garbage in there (it has happened, I promise). The other day someone actually came to our apartment to tell us we did something wrong with the trash.
I appreciate that the Italians want to recycle as much as possible, and we are trying to do it correctly. All of our mistakes have been due to misunderstandings, not laziness, as we have been checking the posted schedules (just not the correct ones apparently). Every other apartment has had no problems with their trash schedule as far as I can tell. My roommates and I laugh about it, but it's rather embarrassing that we can't seem to master what should be a simple task. I definitely have a new appreciation for the simplicity of taking out the garbage back home. I won't miss the crazy collection schedule when I am back in Florida, or the pressure of potential fines for putting out the trash at the wrong time of day. I think part of the issue is that I'm not used to living in an apartment, although I have to sort my recyclables in the dorms at UF.
Hopefully from now on there will be no more to add to the Trash Saga.
Allison
No comments:
Post a Comment