By Dominick Hiddo
photo credit: Dominick Hiddo | project: Clean Food
Last year, Italy changed my life. I mean, overall, everything changes our lives. The food we eat. The books we read. The music we listen to. The work we do. The decisions we make, the people and the circumstances. Everything affects our lives and our lifestyles. But I will say that my deeper exposure to the Italian culture really took my understanding of La Dolce Vita to a whole new level. After my trip last year, I made a conscious decision to study the culture and lifestyle of the Italian people. And part of that took place when I came home: of course with Kaite's help. Also, I started taking classes in efforts to study Italian. But as you can imagine, you can't really study and speak a language until you begin to digest and understand the culture surrounding that language, and I'm not only talking about the food: I'm sure many of you bi-lingual and multi-lingual people know this very well. But I'm just learning all about this. Katie's family in Italy doesn't speak much English. So, learning about the language and the culture became a priority for me last year, and especially this year. But as you can imagine, studying Italian for a few months would not be enough to immerse me fully in the country and all of its nuances just yet. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful launching pad for what I was set to experience this year.
