Archive for the ‘expat life’ Category
Defining Your Own Simplicity
You have to figure out for yourself where your happiness lies, what your most important concerns are, and what changes you would like to make in your life.
Read on...Exploring New Directions: The Making of a Mission Statement
In my post Life Lessons in Southern Italy: It’s the Simple, Stupid, I quietly started down a new path for this blog as I begin processing my journey to where I am today — physically as well as psychologically. Although I’ve been writing here for years, up until now, I haven’t really stopped to evaluate the lifestyle choices I’ve made. Various posts have touched on this theme (The Meaning of Calabrian Life, Settling Into Southern Italy, and generally, I think, in all the Love Thursday posts, among others), but there’s nothing like the seven-year (itch) mark for the expat to take account of her life.
Yes, over the past seven and a half years, I’ve been so busy simply living (no pun intended), I wasn’t really processing it all — and I thought that “leading by example” for lack of a better term could help others follow their own dreams. And I still feel this is possible, but I’m ready for a slightly new direction. I’m ready to conquer challenges beyond learning a new language, starting a freelance writing career from nothing, and raising goats; I’m ready to delve into the emotions and thought processes behind my life’s changes and more explicitly help you identify areas in your life you’d like to improve as well.
I would be honored if you would accompany me on this journey.
I will be exploring various concepts that have become central to my daily life, including simplicity, being present in the moment, decluttering, making meals from scratch (continuing this theme, actually) acknowledging feelings deep within your soul, and much more, but please know there are no obligations here. I will be writing about a highly personalized journey to be sure, but hopefully with applications in your daily life as well.
It’s a journey that may not interest you in the least, and that’s OK. Even if you’ve been a Bleeding Espresso reader from the start and you feel like jumping off now, there are truly no hard feelings on my part. I wish you the best on your own life journey, and you’re welcome to come back at any time.
A blog is a living, breathing being, and mine follows my waves because I’m the one writing it — this is where I am in my life right now, and these are things I need to write about, not only to gain some clarity and perspective in my own mind but also to hopefully encourage you to do the same.
Look at your life: where you are, from where you’ve come, and where you’d like to go.
And I don’t necessarily mean physically.
Some of you got the impression from my last post that I believe simplicity and/or the good things in life can only be found in on a hilltop in rural southern Italy or even in Italy generally. Hardly. For some of you, life on my hilltop would be absolute hell. I can guarantee that. And life in Rome might not be much better for some of you either. Indeed, if you look around a bit, you’ll find plenty of disgruntled expats and former expats who can tell you all about their frustrations with living in Italy.
That’s not what you’ll find here, though, as I don’t dwell on the negatives naturally, but also because for me, the positives of living here so far outweigh the negatives for me that the latter are barely worth some quick Facebook rants. Always remember though, that I’ve been here for seven plus years, and I live a very particular kind of lifestyle — my experiences are mine and mine only.
I can’t and don’t speak for anyone else.
But my goal was never to convince you to move to Italy. It’s certainly not the right choice for everyone or even most people. And that’s why I’m giving fair warning that this blog is destined to veer off the subject of Italy as I explore universal concepts that apply to human emotions and actions no matter where you live; at the same time, though, I can’t deny that my location — consciously chosen by me because I felt in my very being that I was meant to be here in my ancestors’ village — has played an important role in my personal journey and my lifestyle choices, so the shadow of Calabria will likely never be too far behind.
No matter our physical locations, though, it’s important to acknowledge that we are all just doing our best to maneuver through this agrodolce vita — bittersweet life. No life anywhere is dolce all the time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to find some sweetness in each and every moment. For me, simplifying certain aspects of my life has helped me do that, and I’d love to tell you more about it.
I hope you’d love to listen and share your experiences as well.
The Colors of Fall in Calabria
We do get some leaves changing color here, but fall in Calabria actually is quite colorful besides those warm autumnal hues I grew up with in the mountains of Pennsylvania:
Fall in Calabria on Flickr
1. Saffron flowers, 2. Chestnuts, 3. Persimmons, 4. Drying peperoncini, 5. Prickly zucchine, 6. Melagrane dal giardino, 7. Eggplant, 8. Hanging out, 9. Zucchine flower, 10. Lemon blossom after the rain, 11. Zucche, 12. Some of our olives in September, 13. Pomegranate seeds
Many of us expats in Italy have written about being more in touch with the seasons here than we were in our home countries, mostly because our routines are so much more ruled by what the weather is like outside. Over the past month or so, for instance, many of us have been busy gathering wood, picking olives, preserving the summer’s bounty for enjoyment all winter, and thinking about all the soups, stews, and dishes “al forno” we’ll be making for the next few months. The first “signs o’ fall” if you will.
And yes, for me, there have been other changes in the routine, like feeding the goats and locking the hens in the henhouse just a little bit earlier in the evenings and also picking back up some habits that had fallen by the wayside over a busy summer — wonderful daily commitments like yoga and working on a dusty old manuscript, and also weekend projects like finding little ways to make the house that much cozier.
We’ll be spending quite a bit of time in here in the coming months, after all.
Yes, fall here always inspires me to dig back into the good, warm, comfortable, and cozy . . . which comes first, the cooler weather or the nesting mentality? I don’t know, but I’m not complaining.
What says “fall” to you?
Five in Focus: American Expat Bloggers on Italian Movies
In conjunction with the release of George Clooney’s The American, I was one of the American expat bloggers asked by Focus Features to choose the five films I feel sum up Italy for me.
Please click on the screenshot to go see the five films I chose…
and then please come back and let me know what yours are and why in the comments.
And by the way, have you seen The American? What did you think?
P.S. I’ve put up a “Media Buzz” page to gather some of the other places that mention Bleeding Espresso. Have a look see!
Marcus of Umbria by Justine van der Leun
Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl About Love by Justine van der Leun is about a young American woman who moves to a small, rural village in Italy on a whim and ends up falling in love with a dog.
Does it surprise you that I really, really enjoyed this book?
After becoming smitten with a local Italian ragazzo on vacation, the author packs up her New York City life and transplants herself to Collelungo in Umbria, the Green Heart of Italy. She immediately becomes part of the family, and she is expected to contribute as such. I think it’s safe to say this is her first of many culture shocks detailed throughout the book.
As we learn more about Justine’s new surroundings and the people playing prominent roles in her daily life, we also get to know the author through how she handles new, challenging situations. The picture isn’t always pretty, but it certainly seems honest. Being able to trust the author of a memoir is always a huge plus.
Justine’s time in the village wasn’t full of leisurely days sipping wine under the Umbrian sun and raucous family gatherings by night, and she pulls no punches on this anti-Under the Tuscan Sun lifestyle she adopts. Her fidanzato isn’t the most attentive (although he seems like a good enough guy), his brother has a cruel streak to say the least, and common methods of keeping and training animals are heart-wrenching to animal lovers.
Justine manages to present these tidbits and others in a very matter-of-fact way though, without judgment. It is what it is, if you will, and in many instances, it’s been that way for centuries in Collelungo (and other small towns throughout Italy). I can’t speak for what the people of Collelungo might think about Justine’s perceptions as related in the book, but from my perspective in what seems to be a similar village, they rang fairly accurate.
But through all the ups and downs of life in Collelungo, Justine’s growing love for Marcus, an English pointer she rescues, keeps her grounded — in fact, literally, as she is reluctant to leave town even after her love affair has soured, not knowing what will happen to her beloved pooch. Indeed, the only issue I had with the book is that I would have liked more Marcus!
Witty, descriptive, well-crafted, and just plain entertaining, this book gets four and a half espresso cups out of five; more Marcus would’ve had my cup runneth-ing over. Marcus of Umbria is more about Justine’s year living in rural Italy than simply a girl meets dog tale, but what it does, it does well — so I highly recommend it.
P.S. You can also “like” Marcus of Umbria on Facebook and follow Justine @justinevdl on Twitter.
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Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
Calabria Guidebook
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