15 Confessions of an American Living in Italy.

 1. I have a love-hate relationship with the driving here. There are no rules.

2. I love Italian music, even if I can't understand the words. It's happy music.

 

3. Sometimes I miss Pizza Hut and Dominoes.

4.  I wish I could adopt all of the stray cats and dogs.

5. Sometimes I feel insecure when I'm out in town, these Italians are sooo good looking with their dark and exotic, sexiness. Rude.


                                        


6. And speaking of being sexy...sometimes it'd be nice to have just a regular ol' American donut with all the unhealthy, gooey yumminess that comes with all the processing ;)

 

6. I love the Italian/European work ethic. It's almost sort of like their driving, no rules. You'll often hear "we go now" and see them closing up shop for various reasons whether it be lunch or to go home and take a nap anywhere between 11:30am - 4:30, every day. 

7. “Dolce far niente – the sweetness of doing nothing.” Italians have mastered this ethic. To truly live, and enjoy their lives. I've always felt that too many people live to work when it should be the other way around.

8. Italians have a passion for eating but also for talking. I think I'll fit in perfectly here ;)

9. It bothers me that I can't just get in my car and drive for days and days, alone. Here I have to be safe and know where I'm going. Pffffft.

10. I love that Italians are loud and passionate. Again, I'm fitting in perfectly here!

11. I think I will never eat regular ice cream again after eating Gelato.

12. Google Translate. I love you.

13. My absolute favorite Italian song right now is Mi Mi Mi by Serebro

14. I think the Italian language is one of the most beautiful languages out there.

15. I will, one day, own a turquoise wooden boat and fish in the Amalfi Coast, often.

6 Rules of Success. POWERFUL.

My friend, and neighbor Josh showed me this video but as I sat down, I never expected it to affect me the way it did. This is probably one of the most powerful and meaningful videos I've seen in awhile and I wanted to share it with you.

This particular part affected me the most, very powerful.

"You gotta love it, it's gotta be what you are supposed to do. You wanna sing even though they won't invite you to Carnegie Hall? You gonna sing to anybody that'll listen to you, including singin' to yourself.

You gotta write even if no one publishes your book, write because that was given to you to do. You do what it is you're supposed to do. 

You supposed to feel something? You supposed to create something?

"I don't know how to do it." LEARN.

Do whatevers required. It's necessary, if you want it you gotta go into action, you gotta be willing to experiment. You gotta be willing to fail, and to succeed. You gotta be willing to form and to develop new relationships. It's you, it's all on you. You gotta be willing to make that happen, nobody's gonna bring it to you on a silver platter and say here's your dream, manifest it. Yes it's hard! It's difficult and it's worth it.

-Les Brown

EVERY word, I believe in. It speaks to me, and I hope it speaks to you too.

A New Way of Seeing Things.

Listening to an Italian radio station tonight with the doors open wide letting the fresh Italian air breeze through my house. I can only understand maybe 2 or 3 words of a whole song but it still speaks to me, makes me feel.

 Music has no language barrier. It's just music. You listen to it and you feel it.

We've been living here in Italy for 80 days now and have learned a few more Italian words, however, there is still that language barrier. It's almost like a part time job learning a new language but we're so happy to have this opportunity. 

I would say for me personally, the biggest struggle is the fear that the Italians might think I sound stupid or that I'm just being fake (because I'm very obviously not from here). But, I have to keep reminding myself that what if the tables were turned? How would I feel if someone came to my country and were trying to hard to speak my language? 

I would appreciate it. I would respect it.

And I've had several Italians tell me that they feel the very same way. That even though I'm not from here, I am trying to adapt to the culture by not only learning the language but in many, many other ways as well, and they respect that.

So, this gives me thoughts. Mind you, small town, slightly uneducated and raw thoughts. But they're my thoughts :)

Growing up in the United States I often saw news stories, heard people talking, saw bumper stickers etc. about people coming from other countries for various reasons and, of course, not knowing English...And I will shamefully admit that the hype and anger sort of sucked me in, I too was one of those people who felt like screaming "Learn English!" or "why do I have to press 1 for English in my own country!" I'm not proud of it now, now that I have a completely new perspective. I feel like my eyes have been opened and I'm embarrassed by how naive' and closed minded I was. 

I feel, that if someone comes to my country, legally, to make an honest life for themselves, and genuinely wants to learn my culture and language, then by all means! There are other people out in the world that have dreams of traveling and learning just like I do and I guess I just never saw it that way. Until I got here.

I'm SO grateful for the Italian people here that I've come in contact with so far. Each one of them have been so helpful and understanding. And the fact that they've learned English themselves makes me feel like we're all in this together. If people were to just be open to seeing it, they would discover that this world we live in isn't so big after all.  And that a smile is the same in all languages.

Let's help each other out.

Instead of having a language barrier, and walls up towards one another let's put the barrier up to hate, anger, racism, pride and being closed-minded.

I know we all think, "I'm just one person, how can that make a difference" but it's just like that quote: 

"To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world"  -Bill Wilson

In other words, you could change someones entire being, their entire world. That's huge.

Big People, Little World.

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!!

What a Crazy Beautiful Ride.

2013.
By far one of the top, best years of my life.

And I'm only just getting started.

The year 2013 started out on top, the best it could get. Or so I thought. Riley and I got engaged on January 20th, 2013. So naturally, the next few months was the "honeymoon phase" of planning the wedding and celebrating, of course.





In March, I said goodbye to my Honda Civic, the car the brought me to North Carolina and ultimately to this life I'm living now

bought my new car:


 



AND adopted our kitty, Naviche'





In April, Riley turned 27 years old

In May, I turned 27 AND found out we had been approved to move to Italy! It was probably the best birthday present I have ever been given.
I also took a road trip from North Carolina to Missouri to visit my aunt Vonnie.

In June, there was a hurricane, I broke my pinky toe, and house/pet sat some really amazing dogs.




July was a busy month of planning for our trip to Oregon in August.

Then in August we drove to Oregon (our home state) . If you go here:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.365163406944399.1073741837.100003522271099&type=1&l=ae0aee4ff8

You can see all the pictures from that trip.


 Then had our wedding on August 7th, 2013!

 

To see more pictures of our wedding, you can go to this link:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.376513475809392&type=1&l=9e084a6f3c

Then in September, I drove back home to North Carolina from Oregon. Just me and my kitty. (Riley flew back right after the wedding for work)
And it was a month of relaxing, shopping, packing and preparing for our move to Italy.

When October came, I took yet another cross country road trip, making it my 4th time across the country and back, this time it was just me...To take my Mazda to my parents' while we're in Italy for the 3 years. I spent some time there, then flew back:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.394585754002164.1073741843.100003522271099&type=1&l=7f0ddf69eb

On November 29th, 2013, we started our journey to Italy! We flew out from North Carolina, stopped in Virginia, then Portugal and finally arriving in Naples, Italy on November 30th, 2013.
And this is where our new story, here in Italy begins :)

On the very first day of our area orientation class, we met two amazing people, Josh and Nicole. We instantly clicked and have been having the time of our lives exploring Italy, celebrating birthdays (Navi' turning 1) and anniversaries, trying out new bars and towns, meeting the locals and trying to learn the language, "not having a Christmas", Nicole and I walking EVERYWHERE, deciding how we want to spend our time here, missing family, going through awkward situations, seeing each other cry, and laugh, borrowing brooms, food and cars, singing karaoke horribly but still having an amazing time, going through our first "Italian" earthquake, driving out in town and amongst the anarchy they call traffic here and deciding to get healthy/start working out, and having each other to motivate.
I feel seriously blessed to have met them. They are so much fun, intriguing, unpredictable, adventurous and the best of friends anyone could ask for.

As for Riley and I, there have been times of stress and/or friction between the two of us but we've worked through them together, and as it should be, gotten stronger because of it. And we are so happy, and grateful. I can't say it enough, how thankful we are to have been given this opportunity to live in Italy for 3+ years.
Although, we are anxiously awaiting for the rest of our stuff from the states to get here, which won't happen until a few weeks from now :/

To see all of the pictures of our new lives here, up to date, you can visit this link:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.421832687944137.1073741848.100003522271099&type=1&l=ec77102356


Today, on the first day of 2014. I did my annual file organizing for the new year, deep cleaning and organizing of our home, bathing Navi'...basically doing what I felt necessary to go into this new year on a clean and bright fresh board. We have our health, good friends, family back home that we love and miss, and 5392009361 new countries, cities and places to explore! This year, for me and my family, will be prosperous, full of joy, love and most of all, even if for just one person, we can make a positive difference in their lives. 

This year,
I will become a better wife
I will lose my goal amount of weight and get HEALTHIER
I will face any fears that I may face with courage and strength  
I will strengthen my relationship with God
I will see or do something new, even if it scares me at least once a week
and lastly,
I will prepare myself so that when my parents come in December, they will have the time of their lives, as we will be able to financially and physically provide the greatest trip to Italy anyone will ever experience :)

I say I will, rather than, "I'm gonna try", or "I hope I can" because I WILL. These are not "New Years Resolutions" these are things that will happen!

Here's to a whole new year, good changes, adventure, progress and constantly bettering ourselves!





Here's to 2014!! I hope everyone has an amazing year.



 

You Asked, I Answered!

 Recently I've been asked some questions about Italy and our new lives so here we go!

Q.What's the exchange rate on currency?
A. Right now it's $1.38. Meaning 1 Euro is worth $1.38 US. 


Q. What’s the climate like? Are there 4 seasons?
A. I've only been here since November 30th, 2013 so it's been cold, and not humid. Hasn't gotten any higher than 50 degrees. (Also, they go by celsius here so technically that would be 15 degrees celsius.) 
   
      
Q. What’s the common religion?
A. Catholicism


Q. How much does a gallon of milk cost? A dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, a gallon of gas?
A. I have not been shopping out in town yet, I'll let you know when I know :)

 
Q. What is your first impression of: the people, city life, air quality, traffic?
A. My first impression of the people can be summed up in 2 words; passionate and beautiful. So far a great impression. The city? I've only been to Napoli and Rome so far and I would say crowded, compact, A LOT of people/horses/vehicles and buses. And EXTREMELY beautiful. Air quality; smoky and clear if that makes any sense, lol. And lastly, the traffic:

 I wish I was joking.

 
Q.What information have you gleaned from the classes you’ve taken?
A. That moving over here with the military seems to be A LOT easier and a smoother transition than just moving over here on your own.

 
Q. What kinds of clothes, shoes, purses, etc will be important there?
A. So far it's been winter so scarves, real shoes (not flip flops or flats), hats, warm puffy coats, pants etc.

 
Q. I hear the electricity goes out a lot; why? And how do you prepare for that?
A. The electricity goes out a lot because here in Italy we get our power from France so if any little thing happens there, we're affected too. How to prepare for it? Make sure all electronics are always at full charge, have plenty of water and non perishable foods, batteries, candles and games on hand and wait it out. Here on the base, they are able to forewarn us when a power outage is going to happen and for how long so we can better prepare.

 
Q. How can someone track where you are with Google Earth?
A. I could tell you that, however, because I'm here with my husband who's in the military, I'd have to kill you, lol ;)

 
Q. Do they have states, like in America? 
A. Italy does not have states, it has regions. There are 20 regions. Some of them include Abruzzo, Campania, Calabria, Giulia, Lombardia, Friuli and Venezia.


Q. What are the roads like? 
A. Crowded and bumpy....From what I've seen so far.

 
Q. How are their traffic laws different?
A. There aren't any. No really, as far as I've seen and experienced, no one really follows any traffic laws. But here's an idea of what they SHOULD be.

Q. I heard bidets are common over there, how does one use a bidet?
A. You basically sit on it either facing the water nozzle or not, and clean yourself off with the water. It's just an alternative/secondary way of cleaning yourself after using the toilet.

 

 

Q. What is the biggest surprise to you so far?
A. How compact Rome was.

 
Q. What is the Italian mindset toward pets?
A. I haven't seen any personal interaction between an Italian and an animal but I do know there are A LOT of strays here.

 
Q. What’s the ambience like there; the spirit of the area?
A. Nice, cultured, colorful, passionate, happy (from what I've seen so far) and very friendly. They also seem to really appreciate when we try to learn/use their language.


Q. What is their attitude toward Americans, and the military people?
A. Good. They are pleased to have us on their soil, and even happier when we try to learn/use their language.

 
Q. What kinds of things are different with the internet, telephones, power?
A. A lot of things that are available in the U.S. like Pandora, Netflix and American cable is not available here. They also have a completely different plug in system. its 220 watt rather than 110 or 120 like the U.S. has.

 
Q. Do you have to pump your own gas?
A. I don't know, but we are buying a car today so I'll let you know! :)

 
Q. You mention I your blog that there’s a lot of walking; what kind of shoes would be good?
A. Tennis shoes, shoes with memory foam and good support. NO flip flops, flats or Ugg type shoes.

 If you have anymore questions, thoughts or concerns, please let me know and I will do my best to answer! :)

Our first time in Rome, Italy!

 First of all, I would like to start off with a little story.

Some of you may remember back in the beginning when I first starting my blog. I told the story of how I came about the decision to go on my first cross country road trip.

I had came upon a medium amount of money. Enough to either do something cool with, or I could pay my bills for a year or so/save it. I decided to go with the fun one. Now, I had a choice of what cool thing I would do. After a few months of thinking, researching and praying, I had narrowed it down to 3 options;

1. Go on a mission trip.
2. Hang out all around Europe for however long I felt like.
3. Go on a cross country (U.S.A.) road trip.

It was seriously one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. Until I talked to my Aunt Vonnie. After verbally diarrhea-ing all over her about this hard decision, all she said was; 

"Reilly, I think you know what you're supposed to do"

So, off I went shortly after, on my cross country road trip. Again, some of you may remember, the whole thing about this trip was; 

"I dunno where I'm going or where I'll end up but I'm excited"

And I headed East. Expecting NOTHING.

Fast forward 3 or so years....And here I am, in Italy!! Not only in Italy, and able to hang out all over Europe for AT LEAST 3 years, but I'm with the love of my life AND married...With a kitty, some great friends, amazing family. I feel so incredibly blessed. Like I got to have my cake and eat it too :)

It felt so surreal last night researching Eurorail and Trenitalia trying to plan our first trip to Rome, as those were the modes of transportation I was researching 3+ years ago while trying to make my decision.

So fast forward again, to yesterday. 

(yes, it took me like a day and a half to get to writing a blog. I've been soaking my feet and sleeping)

We went to Rome. 

 

For our, well my, very first time, his second. And our friends Josh and Nicole got to go with us.

It was the most, over stimulating, fast, overwhelming, chock full o' knowledge and beautiful sites, sore feet, tours, 100000 pictures, incredible, not what I thought it would be, amazing trip ever. 

We took 2 trains, 2 subways, 1 bus and 1 taxi to get to Rome and back. Barely making each and every one by less than a minute. It was absolute craziness!

 When we got to Rome, we landed RIGHT in from of the Coliseum!

 

 We then took 2 tours both lasting around 4 hours.

 

 

 I feel so lucky to be here, with him.

 

 

 

 

 

 Nicole and I!

 

 

 We then went to a little Italian restaurant and had some great food, pretty drinks and got a little rest in before we had to dash back to the train station. The run came complete with me falling up the stairs, rain, being inches away from buses, horses and whatever else was on the road, having to just walk in front of any vehicle/animal on the road...Oh and me having a small panic attack on the train home.

It was a great day. Honestly. 

Such an awesome first time in Rome. We plan on going back ALOT more during our time here.

 To see all the rest of the pictures we took in Rome, visit this link :)

 https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.421832687944137.1073741848.100003522271099&type=1&l=ec77102356