All At Once

When I decided to do a Year Abroad and move to Italy, I confess, I was thinking 'I know! Brilliant idea! I'll go and spend a year in the sun... and maybe improve my language skills too'. However, whilst this logic is not without merit the last week has taught me a terrible lesson. Winter happens in Italy too. There's no escape, quite literally when the snow delays your flight for four hours!

Yes. It's a well kept secret, but sometimes Italy experiences a bout of genuine winter- not just the slight breeze that makes everyone wrap up ridiculously in the otherwise warm early November sun. We've had snow over the last two weekends and are experiencing a seriously cold spell.

A snowy Colesseum

But life goes on and my moaning won't. Despite the cold I've had a brilliant week! Life works a bit like London buses, it seems, you send a while waiting for the next big thing but then lots happens all at once. That's certainly been true of this eventful week!

Last Friday I flew back to England for a short but sweet trip and although I hadn't been away too long I loved my time at home. As I mentioned earlier the journey didn't quite go off without a hitch as the weather kept us grounded at Ciampino (aka the world's most boring airport) for four hours, but nothing bonds travellers better than a good grumble (luckily for us Brits it was grumbling in a queue!) and thankfully after that hiccough the rest of my trip went perfectly. I was only home for four days, but in that time I got to see a lot of my extended family, all of my friends that weren't away at uni and got a bit of all the culinary classics that are never quite right anywhere but England. By this I mean Curry, Chinese and anything requiring gravy! The only thing I didn't get to do was go up to visit all my friends at Warwick, but there's always next time.

So why the last minute, short trip home? Funnily enough, even though I'm only half way through my Erasmus year and barely got my head wrapped around all of the things I want to do, I have started to look ahead and to think about what's next... and how to fund these big adventures. Short answer: get a job. So this summer I'm setting my sights on returning to London for what should be an epic one. With both the Queen's Jubilee and the 2012 Olympics in my own city I think I'd be foolish to stay away! So a couple of interviews called me back home and hopefully come July I'll be busy working and saving up for my next big escape!

Since coming back to Rome, however, things have been anything but dull. Jumping straight back into deep end of the Erasmus night life creates many a tale, not to mention that this weekend filled the streets of Rome with hundreds (if not thousands) of my compatriots here to support our boys when they played Italy in the Six Nations. Flying out for a couple of days is probably as cheap as going to a home game  as you only pay about €25 instead of up to £250 last minute, as tickets are like gold dust in the UK!

The frosty pitch at the Stadio Olimpico.

Despite the match nearly being called off due to the snow, which you can see on the pitch, it was a brilliant day. I really like the way rugby fans can enjoy the stadium atmosphere and a bit of national rivalry whilst standing side by side, trusted not to unleash waves of hooliganism and violence, unlike football fans. We were surrounded by Italians chanting away why we belted out choruses of 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' and I gave Anna a minor lesson in patriotism when it came to the rest of out national songs. We had a great time and the joy of the two of us just going together was that we didn't have to pretend to know any more about the game than we actually do (we follow it well enough) and it was perfectly fine to spend as much time discussing the players as the actual rugby. Excellent!

A couple of highlights from the match.


To summarise, the last week has been rather good. I've been happy in both of my homes, I've laid some groundwork for next summer, learnt that I like rugby and we got snow- which is beautiful and fun, even if it means it's freezing cold, you may fall over and society grinds to a standstill!