What am I doing in Italy?

So today was my last day in France and my official first day in Italy. I decided to spend the remainder of my visa in Europe and found this incredible job. It’s working as a camp counselor at an English language immersion camp for 6-14 year olds in Le Marche region of Italy. This is technically a volunteer opportunity so I don’t get paid but my accommodations, food and in country transportation is all taken care of.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. My flight left from Paris at 6:10 so after sleeping for an unsubstantial twenty minutes, I left for the airport and headed to Rome. We arrived on Saturday morning and met at the airport where we were all put into a van and sent to the other side of the country, the east. We spent the four-hour drive getting to know the other teachers we’ll be working alongside. It was cool to drive through the deeply rural parts of Italy but to be honest, four hours is a lot of time to look at fields. Although, on this drive you could see villages on top of dramatic mountains, holding true to their mediaeval origins where they were safest up high. On the way, we stopped for lunch and ate with a gorgeous view of the Adriatic Sea—this is of course the body of water that runs along the east side of Italy. The SS16 is the highway that runs along the coast and it’s over 1000km long. And between the highway and the sea, is our apartment. We are about 100m from the beach and it’s absolutely amazing. There are four of us sharing a three-bedroom apartment. It’s large and quite updated. Much nicer than I was expecting from free accommodation! The one thing that isn’t so great is the fact that we don't have AC and it’s almost 40 Celsius today. Since I’m used to this crazy heat, it’s just another day but the girls from the states are not acclimated at all and insisted on going to the hardware store to buy some fans.

Another really cool thing about our apartment is that it’s in a mildly small town that doesn’t see a whole lot of foreigners. This means that when we walk outside, we’re immediately picked out as outsiders. When we first arrived, as we were settling in, a neighbor came outside to talk to us from her porch. The houses are so close together that we can hear and see every detail of our neighbors lives. The reason for this is because grandparents would buy or build houses or apartments with the number of children they had and while they lived on the ground floor, their children and their families would live in the upper levels. This is still a popular practice but not nearly as much as it had been in the past. So this nice neighbor of ours, Ava, welcomed us and tried speaking to us in Italian and couldn't speak any English. Or hardly any. But we did manage to communicate with her and she offered us coffee as a nice welcome. This is the kind of common interactions you’ll see in this region and I absolutely love it! This is the kind of interaction I’ve been missing in Paris. I’m hoping that after some time in this environment I could improve my Italian that I’ve been picking up over the year (living with an Italian family.)

The program ordered pizzas (Italian pizzas!) to be delivered to the apartment for us. Staying true to the Italian way, we waited HOW LONG WE WAITING before receiving our pizza. Luckily we all like each other and spent some time on our patio talking and trying to learn Italian. The amazing part about being in a small town is the amount of opportunity you have to learn the native language if you go for it. My goal for the month is to integrate myself into the community a little, or at least try to, by actively working with it. We’ll see how that goes!

When our pizza finally arrived, we picked up our food and water and headed another apartment near to us to socialize and enjoy the evening. That was our very first day in Italy.