My Italian Immigration Experience

Following my eighth grade year, I was both excited to finally go off to high school and ready to have an eventful summer. Luckily, as soon as I got out for summer break, my grandparents reveal to me that they were going to Northern Italy in about a month and they wanted to take me along for the trip. I was ecstatic to hear this news. This was going to be the great summer I had hoped for. About a month later we packed our bags and headed to the airport, with tickets booked for us to arrive in Milan at around eleven in the morning local time. We arrived on time to be greeted by our driver who would be taking us to the Hotel Bellerive in a beautiful town on Lake Garda. This was the first time I had traveled to Europe and also the first time I had …show more content…
Italians are commonly much friendlier and spend longer amounts of time with their friends and colleagues when compared to Americans. I had heard similar statements before my trip but I had always dismissed them as being false and generalized. But after my first night in Italy, my concept of the stereotypical Italian changed. Italians being happier and friendlier than Americans was no longer a statement criticizing American’s lack of basic social skills, it was evidently the truth. As seen while eating dinner with a group of Italian couples, their pure happiness radiated from their smiling faces, full of laugher and love. This is strange to think about looking back on the experience. This was the first time I had ever met these people, they were all between ten and forty years older than me, and most of them did not even speak my language. But, I felt as if I had known them for years and I was part of their family. The greater truth that I came to realize is that no matter Italian or American, we are all one united body of people with similar challenges and personal