BRESCIA, Italy — I’ve read that people who write about on Italy can be divided into two distinct categories.

Some are enchanted by Italy – the beauty of the landscape, the elegant pitter-patter of the language, and by the people’s fervent passion and the overall romance of the place.

Others are decidedly disenchanted, unimpressed and frankly sort of annoyed with all the hype Italy receives – for as countries go, Italy is surely one of the most talked-up and daydreamed-about.

The former category of writers has a tendency to be made up of American women and the latter of grumpy Englishmen.

I fall, true to stereotype I suppose, into the first category. Italy gets to me. It gets tangled in my hair and wrapped through my brain like a song stuck in my head and I’m forever enchanted.

I love it even more for having lived here a year. Now, that I’ve started living life in this country I can’t let go of it, and I know I’ll keep coming back. I am under Italy’s spell.

That isn’t to say, however, that I’m not aware that Italy has problems.

Its government is a mess. Italians know their country’s government has problems from debt to disorganization to corruption, but hardly anyone has any clear idea of the specifics of these problems, let alone any idea how to go about fixing them.

Most Italians I’ve met don’t have much more to say about their government than, “I don’t like it,” or, “I don’t think it is working.”

All of that aside, even, I don’t think I’d even want to live in Italy for all of my life, even given how beautiful and culture-packed it is. If I ever decide to get married, have kids and settle down, I know it can’t be here.

The Italian school system is simply not up to par with those in the rest of the world. Maybe by the end of it, the students have the same level of educational foundation as their peers in the rest of the world, but they have to wade through some awful muddy waters to get to that point.

Any system where even the brightest students are jumping-up-and-down happy to be promoted to the next grade-level has something wrong. It isn’t that it is too intense or difficult, it’s that the entire mode of operating, teaching and testing is behind the times.

Looking around a drab classroom as a teacher lectures and the students give themselves headaches memorizing material that they’ll forget as soon as they’ve passed their oral exam, it’s clear something’s wrong.

There are no computers, no supplementary activities or effort to ensure everyone’s understanding.

Teachers and students alike agree that something needs to change, but this is the way it’s been for years and nobody knows how to go about changing.

A country as creative and enthusiastic as Italy should not be in such a situation, but there they are.

I believe that Italy is a dreamy, dreamy place, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not capable of waking up from time to time to see the less-than-perfect reality of it.

It isn’t fair to think of Italy as too-too perfect, as enchanting as it may be. But I think the flaws of Italy in a way make it even more lovely. It gives the place a sense of challenge, of something to overcome.

Italy’s whole story wasn’t finished with history and the past. It’s still going, still moving and still managing to fascinate.

That makes me love it even more.

Chandler West is a Rock Hill High School student who is spending her senior year in Italy. She writes about her adventures abroad each week in The Herald and heraldonline.com