By: Andrea Ratti
[Ed. note— The following piece, written by Signal Tribune intern Andrea Ratti, was only lightly edited in an effort to preserve his “voice” and writing style, as he makes his transition into learning English. Ratti is a native of Piacenza, Italy.]
I’m Andrea Ratti, a 36-year-old guy from Italy who is going to start a working experience inside Signal Hill and Long Beach’s local newspaper called Signal Tribune.
My main goal is to practice my English, writing different articles about different topics; I’ll try to do comparisons between my country and the U.S., but first of all let me quickly introduce myself.
I was born and lived in a small town called Piacenza in the north of Italy for 35 years.
The population is about 100,000 souls, so everybody knows each other like in a small village.
This could be nice because it would be like living in a big family where everybody is helpful with the other, but most of the time it is not.
A lot of people spend their time complaining about the others, because they are different from them or because they are richer or happier or just because they think in a different way.
In my town only the younger generations are open-minded and easy-going, so most of the people are always worried by the judgement of the others, and they live their whole life in a fake freedom way.
Of course this is not only Piacenza’s trouble; every little town in Italy has the same problem.
Personally I’ve always been different from the main part of the population there, and thank God, my friends were like me, so I spent my adolescence doing, thinking and living sometimes like a stranger in my country, but I was not alone.
Playing basketball, listening to U.S. music and skateboarding are just a few examples of how the U.S. influence was so strong for us and so attractive.
I was playing guitar in a band, and we used to sing in English— Bad Religion and The Ramones were our best inspiration bands. That’s another example of U.S. influence.
Now that I am not so young and I came to California for my third time, it’s feeling like home. Everything is different from my country, but after a period of 10 days, I feel like I’ve always lived here.