Sunday, December 19, 2010

Second thoughts


What might not be surprising is that at some point after arriving in Genova I had this thought:

“What was I smoking when I decided to uproot my life in Toronto and land halfway across the world with almost nothing??”

Sure, all the travelling in Europe had been fun; exploring Italy was great; and a few weeks at an Italian-language school would be cool for anyone.

But it hadn’t quite dawned on me, the fact that I would be starting again from scratch. In a place where the basic first steps (opening a bank account, getting internet access, acquiring a cell phone plan etc.) were greatly complicated by my lack of ability to have a detailed conversation in Italian. [Surprisingly for a port city, there are not a lot of Genovese who speak English.]

Not to mention the fact that I was alone.

It was good that, in the flurry of preparations, I hadn’t stopped to think much about what it would actually be like, living in this place I’d never been before, thousands of kilometres from Canada.

If I had, I’m not sure I would have gone through with it.

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