Life In Italia

We are rapidly approaching our one year mark of living in Italy, and can I just pause for a second and ask where in the heck has the time gone?  I have decided that leading up the the anniversary of our big move here, I'm going to do a little blogging series which we will affectionately call, "Life in Italia". 

When we moved here, I thought everything was going to be all Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun.  Well, I quickly got the newsflash that it wasn't.  If nothing else, moving to a new country will force you to pull up your big girl panties and take the bull by the horns.  It didn't take me long to realize that I was going to have to go well out of my comfort zone if I ever wanted to be successful here.  So out of my comfort zone I went, and it has made me grow so much as an individual. 

Things are different.  That's just something you're going to have to deal with.  We moved from the country that never sleeps, to the country that schedules their entire day around an afternoon nap.  From the country of "now", to the country of "it can wait until tomorrow...or maybe the next day".  Driving is different.  Eating is different.  People are different.  And that's all a part of the life that I've learned to love. 

Italy has helped me grow up.  It has helped me become an adult.  It has put me in situations that are incredibly new and uncomfortable, and told me to "figure it out and deal with it".  And for that, I am so thankful.  I would have never done some of the things that are now part of my every day routine if it weren't for moving to this country. 

I also hold Italy responsible for helping build a great married relationship between John Ralph and me.  The first little bit of our married life was tough.  We both admit to that.  Getting married in three weeks and moving away was a weird situation that neither one of us knew anything about.  It was just the two of us in some strange new place.  But because things were tough, we learned how to communicate, how to work through things together, and how to be each others support group.  I think that sometimes it's easy to turn to friends or family (which isn't a bad thing), but we didn't really have that.  We had to fully trust each other to get through the changes.  I can definitely say that spending this first year in Italy will help us be better in all the years to come.

I can't wait to share more of my thoughts on my Life in Italia--such an experience so far.  Maybe it has not always been "la dolce vita", but I'll at least give it "la semi-sweet vita"!