Navigating daily life in a new city, country, and language
often has its challenges and rewards. After one week, I can comfortably buy groceries,
order a caffe e brioche at a bar,
order food in a restaurant, and buy the necessities of life – like slippers,
for example (which needed to be exchanged for a different size), socks (I ran
out!), a scratch pad, and lots of little things for the apartment. Today, I did laundry! Simple, right? I dried
my clothes at a self-serve laundromat. My
apartment doesn’t have a dryer and well, for €3, it was worth having access
to a dryer as it would probably take 5 days for my clothes to dry naturally! I
also found the local dry cleaner, visited the two local palestre (gyms), and bought a 9-month membership at Ricciardi – a 5
minute walk from home.
My original plan was to start school today, but I was
finding it time consuming getting settled in, understanding the daily rhythm of
Italian life, changing my schedule (eating lunch at 13:30, dinner at 20:00, trying
to stay up until midnight, getting up at 7:30!) and decompressing after 25
years of full-time work. So, I
registered for school last week but with a start date of lunedi 14 Novembre. It was a wise decision, so thank you Marie for
your generous counsel. Tomorrow will be a trial run of a “new normal” day with
4 hours in the morning dedicated to self-study, a visit to my new gym, and who
knows what else. It’s all very satisfying.
