Hey all (mostly likely my mother and father)! Remember when I said I was going to write more in 2018?! Yaaaa good memories! I sincerely apologize for not writing since like January(??) but life came at me fast and I honestly did not expect it. So here I am to give you all the important updates on what I’ve done and what I have been up to recently because I know you guys are just dyingggggg to know. So here it goes…..
January:
January was cold and wet and to be honest I really just worked. We returned from winter break to work and yet we still had 4 weeks of January. I honestly thought it would never end. So with the never ending month and the cold weather activities were minimum and I think I only left my house for work.
February:
February was short and sweet. I even had a week vacation because of Carnivale (thank you Italian holidays!) The weather was starting to warm up a bit only for it to snow (in Milan!!!!!) the last week of the month. Spring felt even further away. In February I began the lovely process of changing my student permesso into a work permesso and I am still dealing with it now in May. Bureaucracy…such a blast let me tell ya.
March:
I started off March right let me tell you. I turned 25 March 2ndand since I was turning a quarter of a century I decided to celebrate in PARISwith my boyfriend (surprise I got one of those now!). It was great! Honestly we mostly walked, drank and ate our way through the city. We did take one day to go to Versailles which was nice because the weather was nice and we could spend a lot of time outside walking around rather stuffed in the palace with all the other tourists the whole time. It was a very relaxing trip and it was nice to share it with someone who also enjoys traveling like me. After Paris I worked until Easter break which was just one week for me. For a couple of days, I went to Cinque Terre with a friend of mine. We went for two days one night which is the perfect amount of time if you don’t want to do the hiking trails. We traveled by train to each little town and made sure to eat our weight in sea food and gelato (sweet and salty am I right?!). Did I mention the wine? Because I’m pretty sure we drank all of it. Many glasses of wine later I returned to Milan where I relaxed and waited for work to begin again.
April:
I’m not really sure what happened in April because it has been one giant stressful blur. Like I mentioned before my permesso situation I dealt with a lot this month. I spoke with one person to be sent one place to be told to go back to the first place. Every week something like this happened and let me tell you being an immigrant is hard no matter who you are and I have help. I have a wonderful boyfriend willing to call people for me or go to immigration places to help translate. I have some experience filling out the forms from study abroad but like anything in Italy, policy and rules are always changing. I thank my lucky stars I have the help I do because I can’t imagine what those you arrive here with nothing go through because Italy is not a country for the faint of heart. Anyways besides navigating immigration laws, April was a fairly easy month for work since its test preparation season. I even had another few days of holiday because of liberation day and worker’s day. Let me tell you I very much enjoy the holidays given by Italy. I didn’t do anything special for these days off except soak up the sun I have been missing since October. I went to Como with my boyfriend and showed him around my favorite town, Varenna. We drank wine and ate gelato and looked at the incredible views. Really it doesn’t get better than that. That brings us to now, May.
May:
May has really only been 2 weeks and they have been (so far) easy. Courses are slowly starting to wind down since the school year ends (for me anyways) at the end of May. I am preparing for lessons with parents and filling out what feels like endless amounts of report cards. The sun has been out more which means more time spent outside and I am loving it. Nothing else to really say about May though. However, there are some things I am looking forward to. My cousin is visiting Italy in June and I am so excited for her to travel and experience this country. My boyfriend and I are going to Madrid for his birthday trip and to take a little summer vacation together. My parents, my sister and my aunt and uncle are also visiting at the end of June into July. I honestly can’t wait. Now that I know Milan and Italy a little bit better I am ready to show them everything it has to offer. By this I mostly mean food. I have a lot of food to show them.
That really everything that’s been going on. With the school year slowly (and I mean slowly) coming to an end I find myself with more time to write. Hopefully that means there will be more articles in the next few months. So if you made it this far thank you for reading and always feel free to email me with thoughts, comments, or questions. Until next time friends!