predeparture diaries 2
20/08/2023 – PREDEPARTURE DIARIES: Back On a High
I’m incredibly excited about moving to Rome again. On the whole (now that visa application is a distant memory), I am back to feeling optimistic about how my experience will play out. Moving to uni five hours away was a huge move for me at the time, especially, having never even been on holiday without my parents before. My gut feeling tells me that while there will undoubtably be difficulties and the full range of emotions, it will work out in the end as it usually does. The one concern that does come to me when I imagine my experience is the question of how to find friends. I wouldn’t say I’m particularly fluent in the Italian language and culture and I’d say it can be hard enough sometimes even having the language in common. It’s one thing to learn how to use the same vocabulary and another to translate your entire personality. I’m also not sure where I’m going to meet people my age. When I’m working at the school there will be an age difference between myself and my colleagues. I have no problem being friends with people both older and younger than me but I feel that it requires more effort than the friendships among people who are your age. Of course it’s possible to find commonalities despite an age gap, but I find myself very aware of how different our instincts and outlooks naturally are. I guess this is something I’ll figure out when I get there.
25/08/2023 – MY VISA ARRIVED!
Despite the first-class efforts from Italian bureaucracy to keep me from my year abroad, I finally have my visa! Just as the visa office had teased, it had been exactly 15 days since my appointment and so the bounty was just on time. While it’s just a sticker on a page of my passport, it’s the the most beautiful sticker I’ve ever laid eyes on and will forever value how the accompanying photo is far more appealing than my passport photo on the earlier pages. This whole process has made me realise how naive I have been when it comes to my knowledge on migration. Meeting people from all around the world in the UK gave me false pretences about the ease of it all and of course I had never thought to ask someone about their experience.
26/08/2023
While filling out round two of the nightmare paperwork (uni edition), I had a minor crisis and I think the first proper realisation that I was moving to another country, something not quite like going on holiday.
Current state of mind: I haven’t done duolingo in at least two weeks.
02/09/2023
It’s September? I am very stressed about the room hunt.
06/09/2023
This summer hasn’t been the most exciting weather-wise. However after weeks of some very mild temperatures, it is suddenly scorching, and my first thought is that there’s no way I’m surviving this in Rome. The conflict in my heart is deep-seated. How am I supposed to get bronzed when I struggle to function in weather that surpasses a comfortable 23°C. I want to know how people do sports in hot countries. This weekend we’ve seen temperatures of 30°C and I don’t see how it’s going to work out for me. I took part in a touch rugby tournament and 2 minutes of activity rendered me a less than attractive shade of crimson. There go my hopes of striking up conversation with a gorgeous Italian during one of my daily 5ks through the city.
13/09/23
Six days until I move to Rome. Still no accommodation. I spend every spare moment scouring the internet searching for a room with no luck. What used to be manageable stress nibbling at my ankles is now biting big greedy chunks out of me with every ‘mi dispiace’ and ‘tutto pieno’. It’s got to the point where I’m taking walks into the village just to sit on a bench with my laptop rather than stuck inside at home. Any time I sit at my laptop for more than an hour it starts to feel like the walls are closing in on me, getting smaller and smaller.
Right now, I’m in contact with a young woman who listed a beautiful room in Trastevere two nights ago. After one evening it was taken down because she was getting too many calls. After the loss of my first potential apartment, I spend my time with fingers and toes crossed wishing that after seeing my Instagram she now thinks I’m super cool and just as cute and nicely furnished as her spare room.
My laptop has never been so neglected. Sitting here writing this, there are 50 tabs open in my browser and four different applications running 🤒.
