by
Kerel Pinder
As usual my classmates and I sat down for delicious dinner in Cagli. As we normally do, I ordered a pizza, but after ordering pizza so many times, I wanted to change up the flavors that go along with my pizza. So I made a failed attempt of asking the waitress to bring me some oil. I couldn’t pronounce the Italian word for oil properly. The language barrier was clear again. So I went with the non verbal communication, trying to form the shape of a bottle in hopes that my poor pronunciation of oil and hand gesture of rounding some of my fingers and moving my hand up and down would indicate a bottle. The waitress looked very offended and my classmates just told me to stop. They kept laughing because they thought that she interpreted my hand gesture to mean something else. It wasn’t until we had Italian class that I realized my hand gesture is used in a demanding way in Italy to insist: “Listen to ME”. I felt terrible; no wonder the waitress was so confused by my non verbal sign. In Italian I was basically yelling at her. I hope she understood that, I really just didn’t know how else to order a bottle of oil.
by Kerel Pinder 
As usual my classmates and I sat down for delicious dinner in Cagli. As we normally do, I ordered a pizza, but after ordering pizza so many times, I wanted to change up the flavors that go along with my pizza. So I made a failed attempt of asking the waitress to bring me some oil. I couldn’t pronounce the Italian word for oil properly. The language barrier was clear again. So I went with the non verbal communication, trying to form the shape of a bottle in hopes that my poor pronunciation of oil and hand gesture of rounding some of my fingers and moving my hand up and down would indicate a bottle. The waitress looked very offended and my classmates just told me to stop. They kept laughing because they thought that she interpreted my hand gesture to mean something else. It wasn’t until we had Italian class that I realized my hand gesture is used in a demanding way in Italy to insist: “Listen to ME”. I felt terrible; no wonder the waitress was so confused by my non verbal sign. In Italian I was basically yelling at her. I hope she understood that, I really just didn’t know how else to order a bottle of oil.
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