Five years ago today I embarked on an adventure that would change the course of my life. Dramatic any? Oh yea. But it is also true. Five years ago today-on April 18, 2006-I bid a tearful goodbye to my mom, dad, sister, nephew and a culmination of 30 years of life as I’d known it....Read More
Earlier this year I wrote a post with five tips for surviving a long-distance relationship and interestingly enough, Google Analytics says a lot of people like it. Since this is my our anniversary week-yes, we are celebrating all week-I thought I’d revisit how we got here and offer some more tips for those of you...Read More
Adjusting to life in southern Italy-without a drop of Italian ancestral blood in my veins-took a bit more practice than it did for my Italian-American counterparts. You see, I didn’t grow up eating seven fishes at Christmas or fearing the dreaded malocchio.Read More
On Monday I shared three words that were the hardest for me to pronounce in Italian-not because they are difficult, per se, but because no one would correct me … “cause it was so darn cute.” Well, you know what they say about paybacks? He he he … . Ahem.Read More
One of my new favorite hobbies is going through my Stat Counter and Lijit reports and discovering which terms readers search to reach this blog. Popular terms include “Pasta Puttanesca Recipe,” “How Do You Eat a Persimmon” and “Things You Shouldn’t Say in Italy” – and we’ll get back to that in a minute. It...Read More
(This post was originally published on this site in May, 2007) Old Wives’ Tales. We’ve all heard them. We’ve all repeated them. We might even believe a few of them. Like, “Don’t play with fire or you’ll wet the bed,” which always scared me a little bit. Or, “Don’t cross your eyes or they’ll stay...Read More
Having a Calabrian father-in-law takes some adjustments. – No matter how much you eat, it is never enough. – You have to learn a new language to communicate, and I’m not talking about Italian. – And no matter how hard you try you might never-ever!-decipher his hand gestures and grunts. But all that aside, having...Read More
Little old men in southern Italy have been making homemade wines since they could walk, unfortunately, after taste-testing the different kinds of homemade wine … you can’t walk. And that is pretty much where I was a few weeks ago when I agreed to go on an interpreting trip to Basilicata to help some fellow...Read More
Just like everything else where you have to take the good with the bad, living in Italy-and learning its romantic, sing-song language, has its bad side. Luckily for me, the bad side is the fun side. A few months ago, Jessica at Why Go Italy listed her 8 favorite Italian curse words and later followed...Read More
And no. I don’t mean sticky, gluey, undercooked, overcooked or otherwise inedible pasta. I mean bad pasta. As in “lady of the night” bad. Whore bad. Hooker bad. Or as we they say in Italy … Puttana bad. Yep. That’s right. One of Italy’s most famous pasta sauces gets its name from the run-around wife...Read More
