I’m Sarah. I’m from the UK and I’ve been living in Bologna for three years now.

1. Why did you move abroad?
There were two reasons really. The first was that I’d just finished an English degree at university and I thought I’d try my hand at teaching to see if it was something I’d like to consider as a future career. The second, and most significant, reason was that I wanted to return to be with my now husband in the city that had brought us together.

2. How do you make a living?
I work as an English teacher at a private language school. The best part of my work is the wide variety of people that I teach. During my average day, I can go through all the stages of life: playing games with six year olds, preparing teenagers for school exams, helping professionals with upcoming business trips and married couples hoping to improve their holiday English. It’s a really rewarding job because you’re helping someone in a very practical way with visible results, whether it’s passing an exam or seeing their growing confidence week by week.

3. How often do you communicate with home and how?
It really depends on how technological the family member or friend is. For those on twitter, I can be in regular and often daily contact because tweets by their very nature are short and quick. With others I use occasional facebook messages with lengthy updates. For those without a computer, I tend to send regular text messages – even if it’s just about the latest Coronation Street (as strange as it sounds, this helps me keep homesickness at bay). Skype is a miracle for the modern expat. When the time difference is on your side, a face to face skype date is perfect for catching up on the news and feeling together even though you’re apart.

4. What's your favorite thing about being an expat in Italy?
Tasting the food, experiencing the sights, smells and sounds of the Bolognese streets has been incredible. I’m always learning something new, not only about Italian culture but also about myself. I’ve taken on board lots of Italian habits which now exist side by side with British ones (as well as picking up Turkish habits from my husband such as slathering yogurt on everything!). Living abroad is great way of discovering your strengths, undiscovered abilities and opening your mind to new ideas.

5. What’s the worst thing about being an expat in Italy?
The bureaucracy. Italy’s a tangled web of catch-22’s, disorderly queues, and office clerks wielding large rubber stamps which they use at every available opportunity! It can be very chaotic at times.  

6. What do you miss most?
Obvious choices like cheddar and hobnob biscuits aside (they go without saying), I miss the ease with which I could do things in England. Although the language barrier gets less opaque day by day, it’s always there in some form.  Whether it’s being unable to respond quickly in an emergency because your brain is translating on a time delay or you kick yourself because you couldn’t think of a funny response quickly enough in Italian.

Having said that, you feel a huge sense of achievement when you’re able to negotiate your way through a situation in a foreign language. When I first arrived in Italy, many of my highlights were seemingly trivial things like making my first phone call in Italian or being understood at the ticket office.

7. What did you do to meet people and integrate in your new home?
I’ve met people through the usual routes of work or friends of friends but I’ve also become friends and met up with several people who I met via social media after discovering the Bologna connection. In fact, finding others who are going through similar expat experiences has been really amazing.

8. What custom/ habits do you find most strange about your adopted culture?
Voting for Berlusconi. Despite exploring the reasons why on a practical level people may vote for him, my brain just cannot fathom his success. It is a peculiarity of Italian society.

9. What is a myth about your adopted country?
Laziness. Yes, things do slow down in the summer months but that is often through necessity. It’s just too difficult to work in blazing heat, especially if there’s no air conditioning. Children have a very long three month summer summer break here but it should be taken into consideration that Italian children don’t have half-term breaks like British children and many actually go to school on Saturdays throughout the whole year.

10. Is the cost of living higher or lower than the last country you lived in and how has that made a difference in your life?
Bologna is an expensive city. I usually shop in larger supermarkets outside the city walls rather than buying from small and more expensive shops inside. However, at the moment both Italy and the UK are in recession. At the moment, Italy is in a worse state of affairs as unemployment is rife and many young, educated Italians are planning their escape out of the country.

11. What advice would you give other expats?
Learn as much of the native language as you can before you leave. I arrived with only maybe 100 words in my vocabulary and it made it all the more difficult. The more you’re able to understand of what’s going on around you, the less anxious you feel when you’re in a new place.

12. When and why did you start your blog?
I started blogging properly during the summer holiday of 2012, nearly a year ago. I realized that since leaving university the year before, I hadn’t written anything in all that time and I really missed it. It’s been so rewarding, mainly for the encouragement I’ve received from the expat and wider blogging community online.

Sarah's blog, Hotchpotch Hijabi in Italy

Guide to Rome

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