upworthy

italy

Education

American living abroad has perfect response to a woman claiming Europe 'is not First World'

Why are we judging other countries based on American luxuries?

via Canva/Photos

A woman in front of the Roman Coliseum.

A woman’s hot take on why some places in Europe should not be considered First World has received some pretty harsh clapback from an American living abroad. The American thinks her opinion is short-sighted and that she’s guilty of viewing other countries through a very American lens.

It all began when a TikToker named @BulletProofBaily, a personal safety expert, posted a “hot take” on why, even though she loves Italy, “a lot of countries that are considered first world in Europe, especially Western Europe, should not be considered First-World countries.” She adds that when she recently visited the Italian countryside, it was hard to find “luxury” conveniences such as bathtubs, air conditioning, or dishwashers.

What is a First-World country?

It’s worth noting that the term "First World" is an older characterization that described geopolitical alignment during the Cold War, and the modern characterizations include "Developed" (or high-income countries), "Developing" (middle-to-low income countries), and "Least Developed" countries that have the lowest level of socioeconomic development. Historically, Italy and America have both been seen as First World and Developed nations.

Baily’s video caught the attention of @WhereInTheWorldisNina, a TikToker who uses her platform to teach Americans how to live and work abroad.

@whereintheworldisnina

No country is perfect and each one has its strengths and flaws. But having some simple “American luxuries” is not what defines a “first world country” aka developed country (the more appropriate term). Stitch with @Bailey #usa #Europe #livingabroad #eurotrip

“Okay, so First World to you means having AC and a dishwasher, that's a new one. You can buy these things for your house if you'd like. They are available in Italy, just a lot of people maybe don't choose to implement them in their house, she said. “Also, we use stats regarding the quality of life to kind of judge whether or not a place is first world or not, just what appliances and luxuries do you have in your home.”

Does America have healthcare deserts?

Bailey also criticized the Italian countryside for having hospitals that were more than 20 minutes away. Nina responded by noting that the same thing exists in America, where there are medical deserts. A recent report found that 81% of U.S. counties, home to over 120 million Americans, are healthcare deserts that lack the infrastructure and services to ensure timely access to medicine and care.

In another very American-centric criticism, Bailey noted that she wouldn’t be able to drive her massive Ford F-150 truck through the streets of Italy because it would be too big. “What I got into my big American F-150 when we got back from the airport, and I'm like this before wouldn't even fit on the street,” Bailey said in her post. But Nina disagrees with the critique, noting that the streets of Italy were made for humans, not cars. “Imagine wanting a big F-150 gas guzzler over walkable cities, public transportation, being less car dependent,” Nina said.

italy, coliseum, travel, american abroad, first world country, europe The Coliseum in Rome, Italy.via Canva/Photos

Just about everyone in the comments took Nina's side in the debate. "Didn’t she CHOOSE her Airbnb? There are pictures and amenities (luxuries) listed," one commenter asked. "You get two options: a) an undeveloped country without AC and dishwashers, free healthcare, free university and more b) AC AND DISHWASHERS, involuntary target practice at school, huge medical debt, huge student loans," another added.

“Oh, you love a place, but you definitely misunderstand it,” Nina concludes her post. “It checks every box of a highly developed nation, you know, First World life expectancy, health care, infrastructure, education. Calling it not first world because your Airbnb didn't have a bathtub is crazy talk.”

From Your Site Articles
travel
EducationLearning
Joy

Woman leaves bachelorette trip after trusting her gut about sketchy men partying with friends

Woman's intuition is right again.

via Nathan Rupert/Flickr

Some girls out at a bchelorette party.

A recent story posted on Reddit shows how sometimes trusting your gut can be the best thing you can do, even if following it will seriously impact your friendships. It all started when a 24-year-old woman with the username Yslbabycat went to a bachelorette party with 5 other friends in Italy.

For brevity’s sake, we’ll call our main character YBC. One night, the six girls went bar and club hopping and met some new friends. “We met some young people, and they invited us to a party. We went and danced and met more people. The night kept going on longer, and we were very far from our lodgings. These young men with 2 women in their group told us to stay with them for the night,” she wrote.

That’s when she had the first strong gut feeling.

“I wasn’t feeling this situation. It felt unsafe, but the group voted and I was in the minority,” she continued.”I didn’t trust these men. Something seemed wrong. But I was at a loss as I could not split from my group and didn’t feel safe separating from them in the middle of the night.”

Even though the girls locked their doors that night, the men could enter their rooms. But the girls, besides YBC, all wanted to stay another day because the men promised to show them around Italy.

“I didn’t want to get into a car with them because I found them creepy. There were women in their group but it didn’t matter. They seemed even more suspicious to me, being overly friendly,” She continued. “The whole morning, I found the men staring at me a lot and also making some comments about my ethnicity—I am Korean and they could tell and it seemed that they were interested in me because of my ethnicity, asking me strange questions …including if I’m a virgin or not.. so in my head I could only think of perverted reasons for these questions because I thought these guys were sketchy and sizing us all up for some reason I couldn’t figure out yet.”

YBC's friends tried to tell her that it was just cultural differences and that the men weren’t being creepy, but she decided that she wanted to leave. So, she called her boyfriend in France, a few hours’ drive away, to come get her. She met him at a local store, where YBC called the bride-to-be and informed her she was leaving.

The bride-to-be screamed at her on the phone and chastised her for spoiling the “mood of the trip” and told YBC to essentially “f*** off.”

After YBC left, the other 5 girls went on a boat with the men who all tried to get them “extremely” intoxicated. They then began to aggressively pressure the girls into having sex. At the night's end, the girls got away from the men and found another hotel.

Even though YBC’s suspicions were confirmed, the bride-to-be was still upset with her, and YBC did not attend her friend’s wedding.

In the end, Reddit commenters overwhelmingly thought that YBC did the right thing by trusting her gut.

“So all the other girls but the bachelorette confirmed that you were right and the guys were super creepy and yet the bachelorette is still pissed at you for getting yourself out of there?” YouSayWotNow wrote. “All of them are very lucky nothing really bad happened, and frankly, they should be embarrassed they didn't take you seriously at the time.”

“You may have saved the entire group by leaving early, as the men realized that you knew where they lived and could ID them,” RobinC1967 added. “Please don't ever feel bad for getting yourself out of a sketchy situation. Stay Smart!”

Most would agree that YBC did the right thing by trusting her gut and trying to lead her friends out of a potentially dangerous situation. Psychology Today supports her decision to trust her feelings. In an article entitled, “3 Reasons Why You Have to Trust Your Gut,” Susanna Newsonen says that your intuition is encoded in your brain like “a web of fact and feeling” and is helpful because it’s “shaped by your past experiences and the existing knowledge that you gained from them.”


This article originally appeared last year.

From Your Site Articles
bachelorette
JoyFriendship
Joy

He's Italian. She's American. Their delightful love story has won the hearts of millions.

Carlo and Sarah share the quirks of combining cultures.

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

Carlo and Sarah share their cross-cultural relationship hilarities on TikTok.

When cultures come together, sometimes it can be challenging, sometimes it can be beautiful and sometimes it can be hilarious. For one couple, highlighting the hilarity of their American-Italian love story has endeared them to millions of people around the world.

It all started when Sarah, who is American, went to southern Italy to visit family members who live there. Carlo worked as a lifeguard at the beach club his family owns where Sarah's family would go. He barely spoke English, but he asked Sarah on a date in the summer of 2019. They basically became inseparable for the rest of the summer.

Sarah returned to the U.S. and Carlo surprised her with a month-long visit in the fall. Their long-distance relationship was supposed to get a reprieve when she was to return to Italy in May 2020, but pandemic travel restrictions destroyed that plan.

They ended up meeting up in Ireland during the summer of 2020, one of the only places allowing both Americans and Italians to travel. That's where Carlo proposed.

Their wedding plans also got thwarted by COVID-19. They got married in Italy, but without Sarah's family and friends able to attend. They had their second wedding, with family and friends in attendance in October 2022 in the U.S.

- YouTube

But their cute love story is only one part of why they've grown a following of 4 million people on TikTok alone. The cross-cultural nature of their relationship regularly creates hilarious moments, from Carlo's confusion over English words and phrases to Sarah committing Italian food faux pas just to see his reactions.

@carloandsarah

@justinbaldoni @wayfarerstudios this is my #lovestory 🤍 #LoveWithNoLimits #longdistance #ldr #couple

Their playful energy is delightful, but people also can't get over Carlo calling Sarah "my love" over and over again.

In one of their first mega-viral videos, which has nearly 100 million views, Sarah breaks the pasta in half before she puts it into the water—a totally typical American thing to do—and Carlo nearly has a heart attack.

@carloandsarah

did someone say... DRAMA??? 🤣

Or how about the time Sarah suggested that she ask for pineapple on her pizza while in Italy and Carlo basically said he'd be forced to move out of the country if she did that?

@carloandsarah

Carlo has had it with me🤣

Italians have far more superstitious beliefs about luck than Americans do, which come out frequently in Sarah and Carlo's videos. For instance, you're not supposed to put a loaf of bread top-side down. And if you get a new car, you're supposed to put a jar of salt in the car to ward off "malocchio" (evil eye/bad luck).

@carloandsarah

YOU WANT MALOCCHIO?!🌶😡

Carlo's English has come a long way since they met—he started learning the language because he was interested in Sarah—but as with anyone learning any language, there are sometimes some funny misunderstandings.

For instance, calling a tall building a "scratchy sky."

@carloandsarah

Gelato with a nice view of scratchy sky😩😂

Or mistaken a seed for a seaman or…something else.

@carloandsarah

the SEA MAN😩🐟

There's often some confusion around which words are appropriate and which words aren't, which is illustrated no more clearly than how Carlo reacted to saying the word "peacock."

@carloandsarah

THE WAY HE YELLED IT💀

Cultures may clash sometimes, but cross-cultural relationships can also create humorous moments that highlight the human side of all of us.

Sarah and Carlo even came up with a way to "fight" without having to understand one another's languages at all.

@carloandsarah

You should try it out💀

You can follow Sarah and Carlo on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

From Your Site Articles
carlo and sarah
JoyLove Stories
Family

People can't get enough of this Italian preschooler's classically Italian rant

Her inflections and gesticulations are just too much.

@guiseppe_matilde/TikTok

An Italian preschooler's Italian rant has people in stitches.

All people have a need to communicate, but the way we do that varies greatly from place to place. Every culture has its own communication peculiarities that make our human family delightfully diverse.

Not only do humans speak thousands of languages around the world, but we also engage in culturally specific speaking styles, speech patterns, and body language—some of which are immediately identifiable.

Case in point: the Italian "finger purse" known in Italian as Mano a borsa.

Italians are known for speaking with their hands. Italian hand gestures can vary between northern and southern Italy, but one of the most universally recognizable is the pinched fingers or "finger purse." That's the gesture in which the tips of the fingers and the thumb are pressed together (forming a purse shape) and pointed upward, often in a repeated back-and-forth or up-and-down motion, sometimes with one hand and sometimes with both. Along with the rhythm of punctuated emphasis on certain words, especially when speaking passionately, the finger purse is often used to convey a question with a sense of annoyance, exasperation, or confusion.

It's a gesticulation most of us associate with a classic Italian grandma or grandpa, but when you see it coming from a tiny little Italian person, it's utterly hilarious.

A viral video, originally shared by (now-deleted user) @guiseppe_matilde on TikTok, shows a preschooler engaging in a passionate rant that is unmistakably Italian, both in the actual language she's speaking and in her hand gestures.

According to Italian speakers in the comments, the little girl is conveying a story about how someone commented negatively about her wearing a miniskirt. User @u/shykawaii_shark on Reddit shared:

"Rough translation for English speakers. Not a literal translation, I made it easier to comprehend

Mother: What kind of sense does that make!

Daughter: They told me 'What sense does going out with a miniskirt make?' Like, think for yourself! I can wear my miniskirt, and you mind your own business!

Mother: Exactly!

Daughter: Think about your own miniskirt, not mine!"

Got a feisty little feminist here.

As adorable as this video is, it's also an example of how culture gets passed on from generation to generation. An Australian study found that young humans across different cultures imitate adults in ways that animals don't. Animals will imitate adult behavior to the extent that it's efficient and necessary to perform a task, whereas humans will mimic even silly or frivolous behaviors that have no purpose whatsoever.

“Animals focus on getting the job done,” Mark Nielsen, a psychologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, told Science. “Humans seem to almost forget about the outcome and copy everything we see.”

That mimicry of unnecessary actions may contribute to the complexity of human cultures. After all, it's not really necessary to do the finger purse to make a point, but Italians do it anyway. Little Italians pick it up from adult Italians, and so the classic Italian communication style is passed on.

And thank goodness it is, because babies gesturing in Italian is absolutely adorable.


This article originally appeared two years ago.

From Your Site Articles
culture
FamilyKids
Trending Stories