Connect me!

By: Hayden Haynes

As we are winding down our adventure in Italy, we are all struggling to communicate with others back home. There is WiFi and internet connection in our lab, but most of the time when we are in there we are either extremely busy or it is in the middle of the night back in the United States. The WiFi in our apartments are, for a lack of a better term, spotty. So if we want to use the internet there we must either hang out of our windows or on the street corner.

Despite this, most of us are not complaining. Several business professionals are actually relieved to not have their iPhone or Blackberry going off every five minutes. We are actually conforming to the Italian lifestyle. You will see locals on their phones, but not as much as in the United States, where are phones are generally glued to our ears or thumbs. You certainly will not see Italians on their phones at dinner. In their culture, dinner is a place for visiting with family and friends. This is a major part of the Italian culture.

So as we wind down, many of us missing family and friends back home. Some of us went out for an Italian meal, and the restaurant we chose had WiFi. Within minutes of realizing we had it, nearly everyone had a piece of technology in their hand. We were getting a few looks from the locals, but it was what we consider “the norm” back home.