As I entered 2022, I found myself settling in all over again.

I had already done the big thing. I had moved to Italy. I had survived those first months of wondering, What did I just do? I had found my apartment in Posillipo with my million-dollar view of the Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius.

But moving somewhere and actually building a life there are two very different things.

Now, I had to learn how to simply live in Napoli.

I got to know my neighborhood. I figured out where the supermarkets were and where I liked to shop. I settled into work. I got to know my portiere, who would eventually become like family to me and someone I could depend on when I needed help navigating life in Italy.

Little by little, my apartment stopped feeling like the beautiful place I had moved into and started feeling like home.

My life in Napoli was becoming more comfortable.

I had also started a relationship toward the end of 2021. It lasted about six months before eventually ending. And while that relationship became another part of my experience and another lesson along the way, 2022 would ultimately become much more about something else:

Building my life. Building community. And sharing the Italy I had fallen in love with the people I loved.

Come See My Italy

I had several visitors from the United States that year.

And there was something special about watching people I loved experience Italy for the first time.

Before, I had been the visitor. I was the one staring at everything in amazement. I was the one tasting the food, seeing the views and wondering how someplace could possibly be this beautiful.

Now people were coming to visit me.

They walked into my apartment and couldn’t believe the view. They stood looking out over the Bay of Naples toward Vesuvius, taking in the same view that had stopped me in my tracks when I first saw the apartment.

And then I got to take them out and show them my version of Italy.

One of those visitors was my friend Vinita.

Vinita and I first met in Florence in 2018 through a life coach we both shared. She’s also a wonderful photographer, and I knew from that very first trip that she had an incredible eye.

It was her first time in Florence, and she had a photo shoot scheduled for the following day. She told me that she had spent time walking around a city she’d never been to before simply to see where the light fell.

That stayed with me.

As a fellow creative, I know what it looks like when someone takes their craft seriously. She wasn’t simply looking for a pretty location.

She was studying the light. I remember thinking, Oh, she’s good.

Years later, Vinita came to visit me in Napoli, a city she had always wanted to see. Her dream had come true.

We took an incredible day trip along the Amalfi Coast, visiting Sorrento, Positano, Ravello, and Amalfi. And as we traveled from one town to the next, Vinita said something that perfectly described the experience: Every view got better.

Just when you thought you’d seen the most beautiful thing you were going to see that day, Italy seemed to say, Wait. There’s more.

Vinita also photographed me during that visit. And her eye was just as impeccable as I remembered.

One of my favorite photographs from that shoot is of me standing with Mount Vesuvius in the background, the same Vesuvius that had become part of the landscape of my everyday life.

There was something beautifully full circle about it. We had met years earlier in Florence.  Now she was photographing me at home in Napoli.

And Then There Was the Food

You cannot talk about living in Italy without eventually talking about food. People tell you about Italian food before you visit.

They tell you the pasta is amazing. The pizza is amazing. The tomatoes are amazing. Everything is fresh. And yes, all true!

But I don’t think anything really prepares you for experiencing it yourself.

I’ve been vegetarian for nearly 30 years, although I do eat fish. Food and ingredients had been something I’d paid attention to for years before I ever moved abroad.  For example, I’d largely stopped eating pasta in the United States because I didn’t like how bloated I felt afterward.

Then I went to Italy and ate pasta. And I remember waiting. Why don’t I feel bloated? What’s going on?

Coffee was another surprise. I’d stopped drinking coffee in my early twenties because I didn’t like how jittery it made me feel. Years later, I was in Rome and thought, I’m in Rome. I want a cappuccino. So I had one and waited for the shakes. Nothing.

I remember thinking: What are they doing differently here?

Whatever the explanation, I knew what I was experiencing in my own body. Foods I had avoided for years became things I could enjoy differently in Italy.

Between that and already being completely in love with the country, the food alone was enough to move abroad!

After living in Italy for little over a year, something happened.  I became a Southern Italian food snob.  I would travel to another part of Italy, eat a tomato and think:

Hmm.

It’s good…

But this isn’t what I’m used to.

Who had I become?!

Some of the best tomatoes I have ever tasted were locally grown tomatoes I ate on Ischia. They were so flavorful that they barely seemed like the same thing I had spent my life calling a tomato.

Once your palate gets accustomed to food like that, there’s no going back.  My American friends discovered this very quickly.

The Tuna Sandwich

One day, while one of my friends was visiting, I was making myself a simple tuna sandwich.

Nothing fancy. I opened a can of Rio Mare tuna packed in olive oil, drained the excess oil and started putting the tuna onto bread with mayonnaise and Swiss cheese.

She looked at me and asked:

“You’re going to eat it just like that?”

“Yes.”

“The whole thing?”

“Yes!”

So I opened another can for her.

She tasted it.

Her eyes practically rolled into the back of her head.

I looked at her like, See?

I told her, “I’m not going to steer you wrong, especially when it comes to food. And especially when it comes to food in Italy!”

I Warned Her About the Tomatoes

That same friend and her husband spent about two weeks experiencing Italy with me.

We traveled. We visited Pompeii, Sorrento and Positano. We took a boat trip to Positano and Amalfi. They saw my apartment, experienced the coast, ate the food and completely fell in love with Italy.

Before she went home, I gave her a warning. I told her that when she returned to the United States, she might want to give herself a little time before eating certain fresh vegetables. “Don’t eat a tomato right away,” I told her.

After eating in Italy for two weeks, I warned her that some of the produce she was accustomed to eating back home might suddenly seem like it had no flavor. Naturally, she went home and ate a tomato. Then she sent me a picture:

Another watery, flavorless tomato. My response? I told you!

And I DEFINITELY Warned Her About the Wine

Now, I’m not a big drinker. And I’m especially not much of a red-wine drinker. But I had discovered a red wine from Puglia that was fabulous. It was rich and incredibly smooth. When you poured it into a glass, it almost seemed to coat the glass. So before my friend returned to the States, I gave her a bottle. And I gave her very specific instructions:

“Do not share this wine with anybody.”

I mean it. Take it home. Save it. Enjoy it.

Do. Not. Share. The. Wine.

What did she do? She went back to the United States, had a dinner party…and shared the wine.

Then she contacted me. “Oh my God! That wine was so good! It’s gone! Can you send me another bottle?” Excuse me?!

I TOLD YOU NOT TO SHARE THE WINE!

She admitted it. “Yeah, you did.”

At the time, I worked on the U.S. military base, and I couldn’t simply send alcohol through the base postal system.

So I told her, “You’re going to have to find it in the States, because I told you not to share it!” Some lessons have to be learned the hard way.

An Italian Forgot the Water

Of course, my American friend and her husband weren’t the only people creating memories in my apartment.

Another American friend who lives in Rome, visited with her fiancé, who is Roman, and another American friend came to visit for the weekend.

At some point, my friend’s fiancé decided to make coffee using my moka. Now, I don’t make coffee at home. Even after discovering that I could enjoy coffee differently in Italy, I never developed the habit of drinking it at home. I might have a cappuccino when I go to a bar, but the coffee in my apartment was basically there for guests. So he’s in the kitchen trying to make coffee. And nothing is happening:

He asks me:

“Is something wrong with your moka?”

“No.”

He’s waiting. Still nothing. Finally, I asked the obvious question.

“Did you put water in it?”

“Yes.”

He had forgotten to put water in the moka.

And managed to burn the handle in the process.

I just stared at him.

“How did you forget to put water in it? You’re Italian!”

My friend immediately came to his defense.

“Too many beautiful women in here. He got distracted.”

Okay. We’ll go with that!  Hilarity!

The Part About Living Abroad People Don’t Always Tell You

There were trips that year. Ischia. Florence. Pompeii. Sorrento. Positano. Amalfi. Ravello.

There was incredible food. There were friends filling my apartment with laughter.

There were relationships beginning and ending. There were beautiful photographs and ridiculous moka accidents. But underneath all of those memories, something much more important was happening.

I was learning how to build a home in a country that wasn’t the country where I had spent most of my life.

That’s one of the things people don’t always tell you about moving overseas.

You can absolutely love the country you’ve moved to and still feel isolated sometimes.

You can know in your spirit that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be and still miss familiarity.

Because when you move to another country, you don’t just leave behind a house or a job.

You leave behind a network that may have taken decades to build.

People who know you. Friends you don’t have to explain yourself to. Places you know without looking at a map. Systems you understand. People you can call when you don’t know what to do.

And suddenly, you have to build much of that again. That’s why community is so important.

My portiere eventually became like family. Friends visited from home. I met new people. Slowly, I began creating my own network and my own sense of familiarity in Napoli. I was putting down roots. And that’s something I tell people who are considering moving abroad now:

Do your research before you move.

Find the Facebook groups. Talk to people already living where you’re going. Ask questions. Make connections before you arrive if you can and continue building those relationships once you’re on the ground. Because you don’t know what you don’t know.

And no matter how much you love a place when you visit it, visiting somewhere and living there are two completely different things.

There will be things you didn’t anticipate. There will be lonely moments. There will be mistakes.

There will probably even be an Italian somewhere who forgets to put water in the moka!

But eventually, if you’re intentional about building your life and your community, something begins to change. You stop feeling like you’re constantly trying to figure everything out. The supermarket becomes your supermarket. The person downstairs becomes family. You develop your favorite places. Your friends come to visit you.

And the place you once dreamed about living becomes the place where you wake up on an ordinary Tuesday morning and simply live your life.

That’s what 2022 became for me. I wasn’t just living in Napoli anymore. Napoli was home.

Next Up in Expat Life…

In 2023, I reached a milestone I couldn’t let pass quietly, I turned 50. I decided to celebrate in Sicily, surrounded by people I loved. But my milestone birthday would also bring a few unexpected firsts, including one for my father. At 50, I wasn’t just celebrating another birthday. I was celebrating the life I had created.