On 10 Apr 2023, I started taking Italian lessons on Preply with my instructor Marina. That was over two years ago.
Tuesday night was my last lesson before her summer vacation and my anticipated work visa and move to Italy. I don’t know what the next few months will be and if Italy will grant me a visa or if-and-when I restart lessons with Marina, but the current moment is emotional.
Continue reading Fix It Again TonyIt’s been almost a year and the virtual Barbarella library has grown considerably, now at 378 items from around the initial 40 at its release on 30 June 2024. At that point any new deployments of the website with bug fixes or new features only took a minute or so, but today it takes… considerably longer.
The physical library–a glass-windowed cabinet sitting in our main hallway–has grown to around 150 items from when I started back in Sep 2023, but my purchases have mostly stopped during The Year of Italy. Mostly.
This past Monday, 2 June, was the 79th anniversary of when Italy, post-World War II in 1946 after the Fascists were defeated, voted to become a republic instead of a monarchy. Similarly, 6 June was the 81st anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944, when the Allied forces began the liberation of Western Europe from the fascists. Also on the 6th: I had an interview at the Italian consulate in Miami to apply for my Digital Nomad Visa (Visto per Nomadi Digitali). In the meantime, our government has accelerated it’s move towards fascism in an increasing number of ways.
Although the adventure is not over for me (and really doesn’t have an “over”) this is a huge milestone. These last five-or-so months have been the longest two years of my life. A timeline:
Continue reading Buona Festa della Repubblica