This fall, I left Colorno and its peaceful life to start my internship and life in New York, a city that requires speed and high energy. I can't deny that I have been desiring this, the feeling of being back in the center and back at the career game. But I also can't deny that I am carrying a number of lessons from my rural Colorno, a place that otherwise would seem incapable of competing with New York City. These lessons are about caring for my neighborhood, my community, and my life, a basic idea that is often forgotten here in the city. A simple example? Recycling.

Colorno has a very particular system of garbage rules. Paper is collected once every two weeks, plastic once a week, and organics and other garbage twice a week. Differently colored bags, one for each collection, are provided by the town. At first, the system seemed inconvenient and tiresome, but as it became a regular process, it became a habit that is invaluable in so many ways.

Working in New York at a catering company, I deal with a lot of waste outside my own home. Surprisingly, in both places, waste separation and recycling are neither enforced nor encouraged. People seem to think that someone else will do it, somebody that the city has hired maybe. I question throwing away so much food everyday and putting all recyclable items into one bin, and my guilt and curiosity led me to investigate the system in New York City. It seems that city residences are supposed to collect recyclables in blue bags that are provided free by the city. Have I ever seen this? No. Has my landlord informed me about this? No. It all brought back memories of living in Colorno. Every time my roommates and I put out the garbage for collection, we were often checked by a downstairs neighbor, to make sure we were doing it right. And it was not just her who was keeping an eye on the foreigners. Sometimes, we would see grannies leaning out of their windows from across the street, shouting something in Italian. We all knew we were being scolded, not sweetly complimented—we often had overflowing paper bins or were sneaking something into other bags. I realize now the intangibility of this valuable time in Colorno.

New York: the city that never sleeps. This slogan means twenty-four-hour-a-day restaurants and shops, and a highly concentrated population, and the outcome is an amount of garbage incomparable to Colorno. If a small town like Colorno carries such a strong ethic about caring for their neighborhoods and their environment, then why can't a city that is greater in so many ways? Is city life too fast for us to care or bother with what seems to be a small issue? There is a contradiction here between small and large: what is small can be so large that its impact can ruin the community, the environment, and our own lives. There is no doubt that New York City has improved its public sanitation, but educating its people on the simplest habit change seems a longn way off. I'm grateful for my time in Colorno, and that I have become a little more sentimental and a little more caring about what seems to be small and inconvenient. In the end, this is what reflects true citizenship and the meaning of being metropolitan.