The Supermarket

Going to the supermarket in another country has certainly been a unique experience. To start, Italy uses a completely different metric system. Rather than using lbs they use kgs - which of course I have no idea how to convert. Also, no one in the supermarket speaks English, and everything is in Italian, so if you are confused about anything - bring your Italian dictionary. All of the fruit and vegetables are fresh daily and cheap!! Its fabulous. However, you have to put on a plastic glove to touch any of the fruit. I guess this prevents people from spreading the germs on their hands. However, it just makes me wonder why we don't do that in America and what in result, my fruit and veggies have on them. I noticed that in Italy, they do not drink a lot of milk. At home there would be half an isle of different sizes and kinds of milk. However, here, the milk containers are small, and each different kind is a different color. They don't sell skim milk, the best you can get is 1%. This has been difficult, as I usually have a glass of milk before bed every night. Buying ground meat was also quite an adventure seeing as how I don't speak English or have a clue how much a kg is. I just pointed to what I wanted and told the man "si si" and he packaged it up while laughing at me. Another thing that I must say I hate about Italy is that you cant use the tap water. I have definetly spent a good portion of money buying water bottles here. I can only imagine how excited Italians are when they come to America and realize they don't have to pay for a bottle of water. One thing I like about Italy is that there is essentially a liquour store IN the grocery store. Most of the stuff is rather cheap compared to what you would get if you walked into a cafe and asked for a drink. I also love that the drinking age is younger....not that I drink at all. The last challenge was the check out line. First I had to figure out what the woman was sayign when she told me the final price. And then I realized that you have to bag things yourself, and you have to ask them if you need more than one bag. It was incredibly confusing. But overall, I love the supermarket here - because EVERYTHING is fresh and cheap!!