Italian Immigration Narrative

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In 2010, I moved to Italy to become an Au Pair for two years. This was a big decision for me because I wasn’t able to speak Italian and hadn’t ever lived so far away from my family and friends before. I felt I needed this experience to push my boundaries and broaden my horizons. It was amazing to experience another country’s culture so authentically. Living in Italy made me realize how grateful, fortunate, and capable I truly am.

Living in Italy provided me with so much to be grateful for. I was able to live for the moment, more than I feel I ever had before. Italian culture is a much less fast paced and so it almost forces you to appreciate more of what each day offers. While I lived there, I worked as an Au Pair which is essentially a live-in nanny/teacher for the family’s children. Though my work there was demanding at times, it provided me the chance to view another culture’s day to day lifestyle. Most families come home in the afternoon for a few hours to have lunch together and almost every dinner is had all together as well. Their focus during those meals is about talking and sharing everyone’s day and enjoying the food that was prepared. Here in our American culture, it …show more content…

Unless you are a wealthy Italian, you generally have a much humbler lifestyle there. Many Italians have very small homes and the material things that most Americans want and vie for, are just not as important there. I realized how fortunate I was to have so many of the things that my life had afforded me that I usually took for granted. I grew up in a large and beautiful home and had a huge backyard. Most Italians would have thought our home a mansion compared to their own, but for all of that, they also seemed much more content with less. I was humbled by some of the people I met while living abroad because they were genuinely happy with having a “less cluttered”

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