Sjilpen*

Do you tweet?

I didn't really get the concept (and I'm sure I still don't) nevertheless, I entered the world of twitter some time ago and I am plodding on through.

I initially followed contacts from blogs I liked but increasingly I am branching (heh!) out and I have started to follow a couple of twitter feeds in Dutch. My Dutch is not good by anyone's standards but I am most confident reading so 140 characters is perfect for me. Often I will follow the links and start reading full articles in Dutch which is even better.

I'm not sure if helping people learn another language was one of the goals twitter set themselves when they set out to conquer the social media field but its certainly helping me.

If you want to follow me on twitter, there is a link in the right hand column which will take you to my feed.

If you are already on twitter, leave me a comment and let me know.

Do you tweet? If so what is the biggest advantage of twitter for you?

Note: As I was writing this Maryam of My Marrakesh tweeted a link to 20 Interesting Expats to Follow on Twitter. What do you think? Are there others you would add?

* to twitter, tweet or peep in Dutch.

Need it, Use it, Love it.

It's a mess over here. We are up to our eyeballs in packing boxes and piles of stuff.

I am being absolute in my resolve not to take any rubbish or clutter with us to Number 75. Which just seems to make it all take twice as long.

To steel my resolve I am muttering "Do I need it, do I use it, do I love it?" at everything. Even the cat is looking worried.

What are your packing tips? How do you cut the clutter?

An Expat's Life for Me

I first lived abroad in 1996. I had taken a course at university because it required me to spend a year in Italy and at 18 that sounded like a wonderful thing to do. I hated it at first, I was lonely and isolated. That lasted about 3 months. Then I got brave. Then I got braver. By the time I had to leave, they practically had to crowbar me into the plane, I was so desperate not to go.

I lasted less than a year back in the UK. I couldn't bare the anonymity of London any more. I craved my life back in Italy, the lifestyle, the pace and the quality of life.

Two weeks after my final exams I was on a plane to Ireland to bond with my paternal family. Initially I thought I would just see how it went. I didn't go back to the UK for seven months, and only then to attend my graduation ceremony. Ireland is a pulse of the heart to me, as natural as breathing. I ache for it when I hear bad news. I celebrate its triumphs. My father is there and I try to get home as often as I can, which is never often enough. The smell of smoke from chimneys, peat fires, clean air, rain which leaves you damp to the bones even when its not raining. I thought I would never leave.

Two years later my company transferred me to Paris. I was ready for a change, my landlady in Ireland was getting married and I needed to find somewhere else to live. It seemed like a sign. I moved my belongings by FedEx, my father was horrified. "At your age I had you and yet you can FedEx your life just like that".

I knew no one in Paris. No one at all. I worked from home and for the first three months I firmly believed that I would never again hear English spoken other than on the phone. Too apprehensive of the metro system I walked everywhere that summer. Miles and miles in dusty sandals. I was astounded by how Paris squeezes your heart with its beauty, over and over again then casts you aside, gasping, at the arrogance of its natives.

In desperation I stumbled into an expat drinks night. Friday night drinks after work flowed seamlessly into midnight restaurant runs. Mouths stained with red wine, open and laughing. Talking and talking with people who knew and understood that hunger in the corner of your stomach which causes you to go out into the world, leaving your home country, looking for new experiences. Drinking buddies became dinner companions became family and remain so to this day.

It took me far too long to realise that Paris and I needed to part ways. I never stopped loving the city but I couldn't achieve what I wanted to achieve there and it was crippling me in tiny imperceptible increments.

I went to the only place I knew I could, to piece myself back together again. I went back to the UK. For a short while I revelled in speaking my own tongue all the time. It took me a while to realise that I was an alien in my own country. I had missed huge chunks of other people's experiences while I had been away. Things people expected me to be familiar with were incomprehensible to me. I learnt to stop talking about living abroad to avoid the inevitable "What? You lived abroad? Well, that's brave. Won't catch me leaving England. Why would you want to live abroad?" Nevertheless, I started to achieve and move on. I met the love of my life and somehow five years later I was still there.

I wept when he said he had been offered a job in Amsterdam. I had just started my dream job a month before, there was no way I could follow him and there was no way I could hold him back. So we began a strange hybrid existence. Straddling two coutries, racking up air miles and never really living in either country. We were homeless and it was too hard.

We talked it out and decided to make our home here in the Netherlands.

That was March 2007, we found a bigger apartment, shipped our belongings and transported the cat. He proposed in November 2007 and we married on a canal boat in August 2008. As much as I have loved everywhere I have lived, Amsterdam is home. The canals, the people, the way of life all of it feels completely natural. I love being an expat. I love the experiences it affords me and the people who cross my way on their own journeys. May it never end.

Dinner

Squash and Goats Cheese Galette, originally uploaded by Emmy (No.75).

I'm thinking of making this for dinner tonight, but we have been having it quite regularly over the last few weeks. Maybe I should use our fallback of Roasted Broccoli and Shrimp.

Ivy

I placed my hand on the dusty wall, one finger lying directly over a crack in the faded plaster. The spot had warmed to blood temperature by the morning sun crawling over the apricot rooftops. I gazed at the broken off corners of palazzo balconies and marvelled at the iron work on doors leading to secret, hidden courtyards spilling over with flowers. My feet followed the polished cobbles set in fans spreading beneath the soles of my shoes. It was quiet enough to hear the gentle slump of a cat turning in a sun spot through an open window and somewhere far away a radio chattered like birdsong.

This is my Italy.

The Italy I fell in love with as a student on a year's secondment. Exiled from the familiarity of London to an alien country where I barely spoke the language and which I saw for the first time from an aeroplane window as we descended over the Dolomite Mountains.

My Italy. Which charmed me, excited me and stilled me all at the same time.

I lived in a small, nondescript town, famous only as the birthplace of Mussolini. Nearly destroyed during the war, first by the Germans and then by the British it had regrown the way ivy does. Crawling back through marble and concrete to quietly sit again.

I changed that year. Slowly and imperceptibly Italy crept into the very bones of me. I became braver, and stronger and simply more than I believed I could be. I met people who inspired and intrigued me. I learnt to listen.

When I left, Italy came with me, in the gestures I make, the way I feed my friends and family, the life I lead and I kept coming back.

It is where my husband I decided, hesitantly, in promises, dreams and hopes that we would marry, start a family of our own and eventually in our dotage, we would return to Italy to spend our days.

My heart fractured for the people of Abruzzo this week, their lost loved ones and broken homes. The fear on their faces that only a force of nature visiting its fury upon you can bring. It is an indescribable tragedy, but I know that once again, like ivy, the towns and people will quietly, gently grow back through marble and concrete.

It's what Italians do, its what Italy does.