Italian language, culture and travel tips
Today I am chatting with Paul and Lucy Spadoni. Actually, it’s Paul who is answering my questions but his wife Lucy is part of the story as well. And their family too!
When April sent me her replies to my questions for my Expats in Italy interview, she told me to cut and edit as I wanted – and I actually did, a little bit – but I just couldn’t take out what was written in her answers, it was too full of wisdom to be taken away.
Every interview is truly special to me because it is a great way to learn something new about my country. I really like seeing Italy through a foreigner’s eye, someone who is not Italian but has been living here long enough to experience Italian life and our (crazy) way of thinking. So I feel really honored every time someone accepts to be interviewed for this blog!
My dear Expats in Italy section is back and I couldn’t be happier because I really love this kind of posts. If you have been following me for a while, you know that I chat with expats living in Italy every now and then because I really want to know their opinion about life in Italy and Italian culture in general. For me, as a native, it is a great opportunity to look at Italy with different eyes and I hope that for you guys is a way to read about the opinions of people who live here without being Italians – and manage to survive!
As you know, I am Italian and I have been living here most of my life, which means that the things I write on this blog are always from a very Italian point of view. So I really love chatting with expats because they see Italian life from a different perspective and this is a great chance to reflect on the Italian way of life.
I started reading this kind of books before Instantly Italy was even a remote idea in my mind and enjoyed them very much. I started with Under The Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, back in the days, and kept on looking for other accounts of life in Italy as a foreigner ever since.
Well, let’s see. I have interviewed quite a few people for this section now and it seems that living in Italy is hard but incredibly beautiful as well. Getting used to this crazy country can be challenging but there are a lot of rewards. Bureaucracy might try to kill you but there’s always a glass of prosecco to save your life.
I am so happy I am able to interview another expat for my “Expats in Italy” series! As some of you may remember, last year I started this blog section about expats in Italy because I was really curious to hear what people coming from other countries had to say about Italy and how living in this country as a foreigner is.
As I have told you in my post about spring, if you are lucky April can be a month full of days off. In fact, if Easter falls in April, you get to have some days off for that festivity. Moreover, if April 25th – which is Liberation Day here in Italy – falls either on a Friday or a Monday, you get another day off. But you can even do better if May 1st – another Italian public holiday – falls again either at the beginning or at the end of a weekend.
March is definitely a long month, but this time it’s gone so fast I barely realized it passed. And to be honest, I have no idea how that happened. It’s probably because the weather has been really nice and therefore we had the opportunity of enjoying a lot of time outside and we didn’t notice the passing of time.
