Day 68 here in Italy and I'm happy to report that the surprises never cease and the beauty is indescribable.
You'd think that the day we got here we would've started traveling and have seen at least 12 new countries by now. At least that's what I thought, it would've been nice! But, moving to, and living in Italy is quite a different story than just traveling here. Despite having to work, unpack boxes, attend classes, go grocery shopping and saving money for these trips, we've still been able to see several amazing places since we got here.
Since I last wrote, we've seen Capua, Italy (where Spartacus was trained as a gladiator)
went to a cooking class where we learned how to make Crostada Tellelini
We bought a brand new couch and kitchen table,
AND Riley and I finally got the rest of our household stuff!! Let me tell you, living off of loaner furniture and an empty-ish apartment really takes an unsuspected toll on you. For the first few weeks it's kind of exciting, having all this new furniture that you're just borrowing, and your apartment always looking clean because well, there's nothing in it! But, right around the month to month and a half mark you start getting irritable, sad and kind of ashamed that you could be such a "materialistic" person. It literally felt like we couldn't move along with our lives or truly settle in without the rest of our stuff. It was a weird color on me that I'd never seen before. But, I'm glad about the new experience. It showed me things I never would've seen otherwise. We (re)learned how to entertain ourselves without a TV, video games and all our stuff to go through and organize and play with.
We now go to the gym and on evening walks 5 days a week, I trained and got to spend more time with Navi', we got to spend more quality time with eachother, we read more, we play more board games, I started making homemade bread and teaching myself how to cook authentic Italian meals....I'd say overall, as hard as it was, this was definitely the good kind of adversity.
We've also learned that here in Italy, we are unequivocally, big people living in a small world. The meals are smaller, their furniture, clothes, cars, roads and even their homes are much smaller than what we're used to in America. Kind of gives us, yet another, new perspective. The Italian movers that moved our stuff into our apartment even commented how much bigger our bed, paintings and couch is than what they usually see. I never really realized it until recently. It IS bigger! MUCH bigger!
We've also been working our tails off trying to learn Italian. It's not nearly as hard as I thought it was gonna be. Before we got here, and for as far back as I can remember, the thought of learning a new language seemed impossible. It literally didn't compute in my brain. Knowing my own language is hard enough!! ;) But, after just 68 days here, I can now slightly understand when someone speaks Italian by figuring out at least a couple words they're saying and piecing the rest together, and I can speak half sentences here and there, enough to get by for now. It's the most fascinating thing to me, this speaking Italian. I can't wait until I know enough to understand and have full on conversations!
Next on our list is Rome, this weekend. We plan on going to St. Peters Square where we'll see The Vatican and the Sistine Chapel among other things. We plan on staying in a hostel (our first time ever!) and maybe we'll get to fit a horse-drawn carriage ride in :)
As well as various cooking classes and festivals coming up in the next couple months.
Look out Italy! We'll be here for 3 whole years!!
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