Do you guys have cars? Is Paris in Italy? At what age did you start to speak Italian?

No, I’m not joking. I’m Italian and I have to deal with these questions everyday.

Let me introduce myself: my name is Matilde. I’m an exchange student from Italy, and I want to cry every time somebody tells me that the Chicago pizza is the real pizza.

I want to collect here some of the funniest questions that Americans have been asking me since the very first day I came to this school, and who knows, maybe I’m gonna answer your questions too. Or I’m gonna destroy your dreams, whatever.

“Do you have the Pope in Italy?” Okay, this is really good. I’ve never seen him, but yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s in Italy. And no, we don’t come across him while heading to the grocery store (some people believe we do).

“Is the Alfredo sauce an Italian sauce?” No! I’ve never heard about this famous sauce before coming here and now my friends hate me because they’ve been thinking that it was Italian for all their lives. I guess I don’t have friends anymore, but somebody had to tell them the truth.

“So, if you are Italian, then you speak Spanish?” ‘Hola’, ‘Como estas’ are the only words I know in Spanish. And guess what? That is probably because I speak Italian, not Spanish.

“When you go to the restaurant, do you order in Italian or in another language?” 

 “How do you say ‘pizza’ in Italian?” I’m literally shocked by this question and the only answer I have is that anybody who doesn’t know where pizza comes from  doesn’t deserves to eat it.

This was pretty much my experience so far, as an Italian abroad. Anyway, I’m not being mean, because after almost two months I still don’t understand if everybody here has a gun or not. Fair enough?

I’m expecting other months like this but I’m ready to face them with courage and to fight to let people know that Italy actually exists.