Arrivederci Italia ☂ Farewell Italy

With the coming of the New Year, a new chapter of my life begins. After one and a half years in Italy, I'm moving back to my home country Malaysia.

It’s funny how one can be glad and sad at the same time.

I’m glad because I’m returning home. Home to friends and loved ones. Home to the familiar. I'm looking forward to resuming my life. I say 'resume' because my life in Italy has been unreal – a complete break from normal living…seriously. Haha. Upon my return home, I'll be continuing my studies for a time, and soon after hope to get a job.

Making the transition will be a challenge. Switching modes from “lazing in the house all day” to “working my ass off” might be a tad difficult. Lol. I’m bracing myself for the pain.  I’m feeling a little blue over my last days here. I will miss Italy – a truly beautiful country that I will be leaving… forever. I wish this wasn’t so.

I’ve made a list of things that I will miss about Italy...

• The lip-smacking pasta and sauces. My favourite: Tagliolini con funghi porcini – pasta with mushrooms. 

• The chocolate. Torino is the city of chocolate. One of my favourite brands...Venchi chocolate. I like Ferrero too. I could get Ferrero easily back home but here in Italy, it tastes different. A much better kind of different. 

• The wine…and the excuse to drink it. In Italy it's cheap. It's good. It's custom. Hence the excuse to indulge... My favourite wine...Barbera D'Alba. I love Moscato too. 

• The old architecture. Being surrounded by beautiful buildings and artwork was amazing. It was like living in a museum :D

• The gorgeous landscape / scenery / nature. I can't describe it. Hopefully my photos have.

•  The view of the Alps from my balcony. 

•  The clean fresh air and water. 

•  The super high speed internet connection....that I can never get back home in Malaysia.  

Things I'm not going to miss however...

• The red tape. It is endless. 

• The weird stares / looks. Yes, I'm a foreigner and I stick out like a flashing neon sign...but please don’t stare! I get the “you're not welcomed here” look a lot. Or maybe I'm just paranoid. Not... 

• The short operating hours. [Of stores and restaurants] Many stores still close for pausa – their really long lunch break. To make things worse, stores close early too. Oh, and they are closed on Sundays. 

• The doctors that don't speak English. I shouldn't be complaining about this. It's their country and they have a right to speak solely in their own language. 

• The lack of variety when it comes to food. They have delicious food but not enough variety. Too much of the same thing can get pretty boring. 

• Not having a cinema to go to... 99.9 percent of their movies are all in Italian...with no subtitles in the original language (English). I've missed so many good movies. 

Anyways, whatever bad points they have, my memories of Italy shall always be fond.

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So to all my followers, a big thanks from me. I'm afraid I won't be able to share Italy with you any longer. I will be posting up some photos I took while living in Italy now and then. I still have a few of those that I haven’t posted up yet. But in time, they will run out. I'm not sure about the future of this blog. I'll have to learn how to take photos in Malaysia...it's a different scene. Finding interesting shots in a modern city can be difficult for an amateur like myself. Plus, I expect to be very busy with my studies / work. I hope to be at least posting up a photo weekly once I've settled myself in. It may take a month or two to get an internet connection. So till that happens, I'm sorry if I won't be able to visit your wonderful blogs or respond to any comments. Meanwhile, instead of keeping this blog idle...I will be scheduling some post to appear automatically every week. Yep, so even though I'm not connected...there will be some photos popping up here. The wonders of technology. I hope this works though.

Do take care.

Big hugs,
Lly