My neighbor from across the street passed away.
This is a lovely woman that lost her husband a while back and carried on caring for her family and the family business with a force of women from a different era.
Funerals are sadly not uncommon in our little neighborhood lately, and, as in any other place, it seems that it’s always the good ones that get taken away.
Local Etiquette is one of the things foreigners struggle with, from how to express sincere condolences, or congratulations, in a language that isn’t yours, to what to wear to a funeral and what to bring to a baby shower. We can be trusted to “put our foot in it” at any given moment, as we cheerfully stumble our way through the local social Italian minefields.
It’s the little things that trip us up. Customs here are not just national, but extremely local, and when I say local, I mean that they change from village to village, much like the dialect does.
In America neighbors bring plates of food over to the house of a grieving family (don’t try that in Italy, it’s frowned upon…and don’t ask me how I know…)
I’ve tailored this week’s lesson around English greetings and etiquettes. Social Rules of engagement, touching (or lack of), what to say and under which circumstances.
We’ll talk about, the different handshakes, when to use them and what your handshake sais about you.
There are some great GIFs related to misunderstandings in social expectation in greetings, handshakes, hugs, high fives and fist bumps, so this lesson is also visually entertaining as much as socially informative.