Buon Anno 2020! This is one of my favourite times of the year, a season of renewal and hope, getting ready for the coming green of spring. The days start to get longer and while there are still a few months of winter, we have so much forward to look forward to. Last New Year’s there were some things of 2018 that I wanted to leave behind – a job and a bad friendship, but…
No one wants to think about hospitals in Napoli, but when something happens you unfortunately have to think about them. The wrapping up 2019 turned into an unexpected health scare and surgery. After spending 10 days at a hospital in Napoli, I’m home now and slowly recovering. If you’re curious about healthcare in Italy and Napoli, read on. Hospitals in Napoli I’ve heard lots of scary stories about hospitals in Napoli, about the lack of…
For all of you learning Italian, I’ve put together 5 ways to improve your Italian using online resources. I use these all the time as I’m always trying to improve my Italian. Even though I grew up with the Neapolitan dialect spoken at home, I didn’t start studying Italian until I was in my 20s. Up until then, whatever I spoke was a mottled broken dialect, learned all by ear and mixed with English and…
All summer I’ve had this number looming over my head as if being in the last few months of my 30s meant something, as if it were my last days being young and now I can’t say that I’m young anymore. Today I’m turning 40. I’ve always been the baby in my family, by a very large margin, and while I still am, turning 40 feels like a big deal, like I can’t say that…
For most of my life, I’ve lived in places where August 15th wasn’t a big deal at all and I was always kind of sad about that because in Italy, especially in my dad’s home town of Monte di Procida, where my family still lives, Ferragosto is one of the finest days of the year. Here in Ischia, Ferragosto marks the peak of the tourist season and the island is packed! The ferries this weekend…
It is hot out! To me, when I think about heat waves, I think about mosquitoes in Italy and how I’m supposed to sleep comfortable at night. There’s a heat wave going on right now in Italy and Central Europe that the Italian newspaper call Lucifero. It’s a front of hot air coming in from the Sahara that is sitting on its haunches across Europe that Italian newspapers are calling Cities in some parts of…
