A New Way of Seeing Things.

Listening to an Italian radio station tonight with the doors open wide letting the fresh Italian air breeze through my house. I can only understand maybe 2 or 3 words of a whole song but it still speaks to me, makes me feel.

 Music has no language barrier. It's just music. You listen to it and you feel it.

We've been living here in Italy for 80 days now and have learned a few more Italian words, however, there is still that language barrier. It's almost like a part time job learning a new language but we're so happy to have this opportunity. 

I would say for me personally, the biggest struggle is the fear that the Italians might think I sound stupid or that I'm just being fake (because I'm very obviously not from here). But, I have to keep reminding myself that what if the tables were turned? How would I feel if someone came to my country and were trying to hard to speak my language? 

I would appreciate it. I would respect it.

And I've had several Italians tell me that they feel the very same way. That even though I'm not from here, I am trying to adapt to the culture by not only learning the language but in many, many other ways as well, and they respect that.

So, this gives me thoughts. Mind you, small town, slightly uneducated and raw thoughts. But they're my thoughts :)

Growing up in the United States I often saw news stories, heard people talking, saw bumper stickers etc. about people coming from other countries for various reasons and, of course, not knowing English...And I will shamefully admit that the hype and anger sort of sucked me in, I too was one of those people who felt like screaming "Learn English!" or "why do I have to press 1 for English in my own country!" I'm not proud of it now, now that I have a completely new perspective. I feel like my eyes have been opened and I'm embarrassed by how naive' and closed minded I was. 

I feel, that if someone comes to my country, legally, to make an honest life for themselves, and genuinely wants to learn my culture and language, then by all means! There are other people out in the world that have dreams of traveling and learning just like I do and I guess I just never saw it that way. Until I got here.

I'm SO grateful for the Italian people here that I've come in contact with so far. Each one of them have been so helpful and understanding. And the fact that they've learned English themselves makes me feel like we're all in this together. If people were to just be open to seeing it, they would discover that this world we live in isn't so big after all.  And that a smile is the same in all languages.

Let's help each other out.

Instead of having a language barrier, and walls up towards one another let's put the barrier up to hate, anger, racism, pride and being closed-minded.

I know we all think, "I'm just one person, how can that make a difference" but it's just like that quote: 

"To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world"  -Bill Wilson

In other words, you could change someones entire being, their entire world. That's huge.