Italian language, culture and travel tips
I always say the same things but you can’t imagine how happy – and honored – I am to chat with people who share with me – and with you all, guys – a bit of their personal life and their experience of Italy. Thank you, I’ll never get tired of saying this!
This is one of the questions I get asked the most by non-Italians when we chat about Italian eating habits. I actually have no quick answer and I always just reply with a smile and “I don’t know”. But after having been asked such a question so many times, I started thinking about it.
Well, this is basically what Susan Zimmerman, the lady I am interviewing today, had to face when she arrived in Italy, after marrying her Italian husband. It must have been challenging to say the least and Susan is great at describing how she felt and how she managed to overcome the frustration of being in a completely foreign environment without knowing the language.
To be more precise, it’s not someone but a couple: Ilene and Gary Modica of Our Italian Journey, a blog that tells the story of their one-year trip around Italy. As it happens in most cases, I have virtually met Ilene because she commented to a post on my blog. In the comment, she left a link to her blog: when I checked it and briefly learned about their story, I immediately sent an email to Ilene asking her if she was interested in being featured here.
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.
