In no particular order:
1. Oil and salt. They put it on everything. They put it on vegetables, salad, fruit, bread, meat and at dinner the other night, I saw a woman put it on her pizza. There is no such thing as salad dressing. There is only oil and salt.
2. Squillo. Squillo is a word that roughly translates into "almost call." You use it with the verb "fare." So, I do a squillo. The word I understand just fine. The purpose, however, I will never ever comprehend. Ever. Because it is dumb. NO, AFS, it is not DIFFERENT, it is stupid. Squillos have no real purpose. When somebody sqillos you it means they call you, let it ring once, and then hang up. Basta. If you call them back, they will not answer. One might wonder why they do this. Well, there are a variety of reasons and all of them are dumb. Boys do this when they are thinking about you. They call you, let it ring, JUST ONCE, and then they hang up. This was my first encounter with the squillo. I could not FATHOM why this boy was calling me over and over again, hanging up every time I tried to answer and then not answering his phone up when I called him back. Giulia explained that is was a squillo, OBVIOUSLY. It means that he was thinking of me. When I asked why he didn't just let me answer the phone, say hello and TELL me he was thinking of me so we could be done with this whole nonsense and the phone would stop ringing. She said because that would waste credit. Oh, of course, because the boy likes me enough to squillo me at 2 in the goddamned morning, but not enough to spend 15 cents to actually talk to me. I get it. Squillo. Does it end there? NO! It can mean almost anything in the world. I was in my room the other night when my phone rang. Only once! It was Giulia. I tried to call her back and she didn't answer. I understood from my previous encounter that I was dealing with a squillo, but I was having trouble understanding why Giulia would have to squillo me to let me know she was thinking about me when I was just in my room. When I went to ask her what she wanted she said "Oh, I squillo-ed you because you left the computer on." Oh, of course. HOW could I be so BLIND! Obviously, calling my phone and letting it ring ONCE before hanging up clearly communicates the message that I left the computer on! I loathe squillos, and I get them far too often. In the middle of the night, in the middle of class, everywhere. And I can never figure out what it means. Fucking Squillos.
3. Oasis.
4. Emily the Strange. I thought that died with my thirteen-year old teenage angst. I guess she lives on in the hearts of other brooding adolescents and middle-aged Italian men world wide.
5. Reality television. It is on every station. It is on every hour. You cannot run from it, and you cannot hide from it. The skinny Italian women with painfully botched boob-jobs glare out at me from every station, briefly incarnating the spirit of angry black woman from Soho as they lament their cheating boyfriend or whathaveyou to the entire nation. I do not watch TV here, and when I do, I'm glad my comprehension is limited to three months of the language. Their fake acrylic nails speak worlds more than their words ever could.
6. Existentialism. Everybody always has an existential problem. And my problem is that most of their self declared existential problems are not existential at all! Can fit all of your clothes into your suitcase? You have an existential problem! Forgot to study for history? Yep, I'm pretty sure Camus wrote a book about that one. Deep, man.
7. Heavy metal. It would be far easier for me to count the people with dark hair in this country than for me to try and keep track of the number of adolescent boys in T-Shirts brandishing skulls, flames and the name of some popular death metal artist on them. I have just stopped asking most boys with medium-length hair what sort of music they like, to spare myself from having to say "mm, si, conosco Dragon Force, mmm, si, anche Metallica..." If I am asked to translate one more song about battling gnomes and goblin-made armor of death, I will take drastic action.
8. Nutella. This is in the same vein as oil and salt. They put it on everything, except meat and vegetables. Pizza, bread, crackers, fruit, cereal, crepes, gelato. I actually saw cake frosted with Nutella the other day. It's on every commercial, it's visage plastered across every billboard. Sure, Nutella is delicious and dare I say, the nectar of the gods, but it is not, in fact, God himself. It's like worshipping a false idol. You cannot go to any restaurant in any store and not find giant reserves of it.
9. Bad, Saturday Night Live-esque comedy sketches. Every Sunday night. They are not funny, and they are not short-winded.
10. Naked woman. A vast majority of public television shows open with girls in tiny skirts and bras dancing provocatively to Beyoncè. There are naked woman in advertisements on bus stops and billboards and posters. Commercials for yogurt have naked women in them. In America, if you see breast, it's rated X. Full frontal nudity is apparently A-OK in the western hemisphere.
If you couldn't tell, I've been fulminating about squillos for months.