Arrival

Okay, so a rapid introduction.  I’m Laura, I’m 21, I’m from England, and am spending a year in Sicily working as a language assistant in a school.  I am nearly certain that the only people reading this are immediate family and friends, so there’s no real need for any more substantial introductions.  I’m writing a blog so that the small group of people who is interested in what I’m doing to a level of some detail can be adequately informed, whilst I at the same time get some record of my year.  So here we go.

I arrived in Sicily sometime during the night on the 6th September 2012, having taken a sleeper train from Rome.  The plan was to wake up fresh and rested, as if from a dream, and find myself in the land that I will call home for the next year.  Well, I did arrive at Siracusa in the morning, but it was after a fitful and uncomfortable sleep, disturbed constantly by the noisy train.  Towards the end of the journey, I was woken up by a well meaning but surely delusional Italian grandmother, who slapped me gently in the face about an hour and a quarter before we arrived in our destination.  How do I need an hour and a quarter to get ready when I’m on a train?!  By that time there wasn’t even a functioning bathroom.  

Anyway, blinking through sleep deprivation and a feeling that I’d made the wrong traveling choice, I got off the train at Siracusa, to the insistence of the Italian grandmother to give me a lift to the bus station and find my stop (the stereotype is right - Sicilians are tirelessly hospitable.  More on this in later blog).  It was a long wait, nearly three hours, so I found myself a cafe.  The Sicilians running it were dumbfounded to discover an English girl bound for Southern Sicily for longer than just a holiday - this total bemusement has been a real feature of my time here.  I am very obviously not Sicilian (the blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin are a real giveaway), and I am the only Northern European I’ve seen in my town, Modica.

I got a bus to Modica.  It’s a short distance, just 65km or so, but the bus route was meandering along small streets, dot-to-dotting about 8 small towns before mine, and took two and a half hours.  Although the scenery was obviously nice, the streets were lined with litter.  I swallowed the niggling fear that my town was going to be an absolute dump.  The thing is that I’ve been to Italy before, quite a lot, and I love it, so the things that bothered me most when I first came over to Italy - the language, logistics of day-to-day life - didn’t really worry me much any more.  What did concern me was an image in my mind of a very small, very shabby town, where nothing ever happens and I’d spend my days sipping tea on my own and trying to befriend pensioners out of desperation.  Well, the bus went down a hill and into a town centre, and I felt very happy and very relieved, because the town is stunning.  I’m a bit fickle like that - if it was flat, concrete and run down, I would have started on the back foot.  As it is, it’s a baroque town stacked on a hill.  Almost everywhere you look there is this stunning view - it’s like having a piece of artwork thrown at you when you look down the street.  It has lifted my spirits a lot while I’ve been here.

It’s a cute little town, which hums along okay in the day and then buzzes in the evenings.  I live and work (will work - haven’t started yet) on the main street, which has a load of bars and shops and stuff, and is closed to traffic on friday and saturday nights so that the italians can do their passeggiata (basically you walk up and down, maybe with an ice cream, for an hour or two - they do it every day, but bigger and better at weekends).  There seems to be live music on the weekends too, there was a cool band there on friday whose set I watched twice all the way through.  

The most annoying thing is just how conspicuous I am here; I swear I could paint myself green and there’d be no notable difference in the amount people stare at me.  I never really know what to do with myself, it’s pretty awkward to smile or say hi to all these strangers, but this also isn’t a place where people walk around ignoring each other.  I know a couple of people to say hi to.  When I start work, I’m hoping that I won’t be so much of a stranger surrounded by strangers.

There’s lots to look forward to.  I have a course in Rome for two days at the beginning of October where I’ll meet all the other British people working as assistants in schools in Italy, and they should explain how to do the job.  I’m excited for work, and I’m looking forward to getting more integrated in the town.  It’s a nice surprise that I like Modica so much already, even though my life here is so new and precarious, and that although the first few weeks are supposedly the toughest, I’m excited and optimistic about the year.  I’m actually just off to the beach now, on a whim.

Lots of love xxxx