Living in Italy Will Break You (and Put You Back Together)
Before moving to the south of Italy, I knew it would be challenging. That it wouldn’t be prosecco and pasta all the time.
And so I thought I was prepared for life as an expat in Calabria.
(Do you hear that? It’s the sound of the Universe laughing at me.)
An Entirely New Way of Living
I couldn’t have predicted just how my life would change. After all, I wasn’t moving to a culture as different from that of the U.S. as, say, Asia. I speak an okay amount of Italian, and I’ve been visiting here for years, so I thought I “got” the culture.
What I didn’t glom onto was how Italians take red traffic lights as a suggestion (and yet I have never seen a car accident here). How everything takes a lot longer to get done. How Italians prioritize relationships so much that they will stop traffic for five minutes so they can catch up with someone they haven’t seen since…yesterday.
I feel like an anthropologist studying a fascinating culture and trying to find my way in.
Trial by Fire
I recently hit a major milestone: I now have all the documents I need to live here legally and comfortably. I have my visa and permesso di soggiorno, which let me stay here as…
