About Expats in Italy
When this website was started it was basically a one woman show. Once our forum took off though I needed a few extra hands. Those helping hands came from a born and bred Italian and a born and bred Swede. In August 2005 we added a little testosterone to the mix, and later Tina became a moderator as well. I hope that you appreciate their contributions to the board as much as I do.
INTRODUCING - CRISTINA
Expats in Italy was started by me, Cristina Fassio, in 2004 after having hosted moving to Italy information on my private website for more than 5 years. In the summer of 2004 we also moved the Living in Italy/Moving to Italy forum that I had been moderating over at SlowTalk to its own server which is now Expats in Italy.
My goal has always been to help people sort out all of the little things that make moving to a new country so difficult. I remember having to go shopping when I first arrived and I could not figure out what type of soaps I should get, what type of milk, etc. etc. Oh and don't get me started on when I had to pay a bill for the first time.
Hopefully with this site and the forum we can help the future expats make the transition easier as well as helping each other out with the day to day things that can still get confusing.
You can read more about me in my Expat Story.
INTRODUCING - ANNIKA
I am a Swedish hairdresser, born in 1979, who lives in Gävle (Sweden) with a husband and 10 year old son, Alexander.
I am a full-time employee at a hair salon, and on the side I run a website and internet shop for Swedish curlies.
Soon after becoming an Expats in Italy member back in 2005 I started to help Cristina with the website, and today we run it together. I guess you could say that I am quite a busy bee!
I started obsessing about Italy many years ago, and found Expats in Italy in 2005. Around that time I also started to learn Italian and seriously research Italy, all in preparation for a possible future move.
See, Italy makes my heart sing.
Being an EU citizen everything is much easier, at least bureaucratically speaking, and I hope to spend as much time in Italy as possible in the future.
My first trip to Italy was for the Expats in Italy Monster GTG in June 2006. The photo was taken near Positano, in August 2008.
INTRODUCING - TINA
I was born in Seattle in 1977, and now I live in Puglia, in southern Italy.
Raised in a family of Tuscan and Piemontese descent, I've always had the fortune of being close to this country's culture, language, history, food...
No matter what I do in my life, I always find myself coming back to Italy. I recently lived in Argentina and thought I was going to settle there, but as soon as I made the decision, the wind blew me back in this direction, and here I am, to stay.
I am a tango dancer, DJ and teacher, as well as a translator and part-time writer.
I enjoy dancing, reading maps, blogging, discovering new places, making pasta by hand, and drinking red wine.
INTRODUCING - PAUL
I was born and raised a country boy in small town in Queensland, Australia. After finishing school I decided to study computing science, which on completion, led me on a 1800km journey south of the border to Sydney, where I commenced my professional career. The year was 1998.
It was there, after a few months, that I met my then soon to be gorgeous wife who is a first generation Italian Australian, with her family roots well and truly embedded in Calabria. We got married in early 2000 and decided we would travel to Europe for our honeymoon. Now or this country boy, at 24, it was my first ever overseas voyage. Stopping in Italy for a month on the last stage of the trip was when my heart was opened up to the beauty Italy and what it has to offer:
The scenery. The wonderful food. The history. The people.
Fast forward 10 years >> and stop [ ]
After a very successful and rewarding 12 years working as a systems engineer, I thought it was time for a change of scenery. Having now travelled to Italy several times over the last decade; being blessed with a little boy in 2005; with my hair recession starting to kick in, my wife and I decided now would be the perfect time to give our son the opportunity to experience first hand his Italian heritage, for my wife to acquaint herself more with her cousins (and extended family) that live here, and for me to finish my transition into the Italian way of life.
So in October last year (2010) we packed up our belongings (well whatever could fit in our suitcases), and with our one-way tickets in hand, embarked on our new adventure, the next chapter in our lives. Sounds like a challenge? as Seneca the Younger, a great Roman philosopher once wrote:
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
