Living La Dolce Vita – Guest Blog Living & Learning Italian in Italy

It is true when people say one of the best ways of learning a language is to go and live in the country where the language is spoken. I spent a month learning Italian in Sorrento, a beautiful town in the south of Italy famous for limoncello and its stunning scenery. During that time, besides from learning, I cycled through pine forests in Tuscany and ate wild boar, jumped off various structures in Rome for a Roman artist’s next art collection, nearly killed 5 Italians when attempting to cook Chinese food with Italian chillis, and really indulged in some of the best food I’ve ever tasted!

I booked online using www.languagecourse.net as it was cheaper than booking directly with the school. There are no agency costs and you can get discounts on courses. In addition, there are over 4000 language courses to choose from with reviews of courses from previous students.

I decided not to go through the school to find accommodation and tried to go direct and find accommodation in other ways. As a member of A Small World, I put out a thread in the Travel Forum that I was moving to Sorrento and looking for advice and tips. I love ASW as it’s a community of people who look after and help each other out and I had several people recommend certain people to contact in Sorrento.

I ended up finding an Italian family to stay with and lived in an amazing villa at the top of a mountain overlooking the Bay of Naples with views of the Vesuvius volcano from my balcony. This ended up being more affordable than getting the school to find accommodation for me (and I stayed at a much better place!).

View from the villa I was living in Sorrento.

I really lived la dolce vita in Sorrento. I had Italian lessons every weekday from 9am-1pm in a small class with 2 other girls from America and Australia. Sorrento Lingue is a reputable language school and the teaching quality was fantastic. After class, it was siesta time! I would either eat lunch at the Marina Grande or go back to the villa to study whilst eating mozzarella cheese with tomatoes on my balcony and slowly drift off to a sunny afternoon siesta with this view. Sometimes I would be woken up by my Italian Mama and Papa calling out to drink freshly squeezed orange juice as we lived in a villa that was surrounded by orange and lemon trees.

The great thing about Sorrento is that it is a ferry ride away from the beautiful island of Capri, 1.5 hour train ride from Naples, and a short drive to Positano and the Amalfi Coast. From Naples, you can catch fast trains to all the other cities in Italy. It was very easy for me to visit these places on the weekends when I didn’t have school.

Highlights in Italy

My Italian host brother was called Marco and he is the embodiment of someone that lives the moment! He used to be a motorbike racer, then a policeman, a tennis coach, traveled across the world and is now a tour guide in Capri. Italians are passionate people and I would often watch and smile at his friend’s expressions and hand gestures as they talked heatedly and passionately and then realize it was about something as simple as the weather. It was exciting living with Marco- one moment we would be speeding down cobbled narrow streets at 4am on his motorbike to watch a religious procession and other moments we would be dancing, whirling, and clapping to Italian music with his friends.

Food in Italy is out of this world! Buonissimo! Contrary to the Italian dishes I’ve had in other countries, the best tasting dishes in Italy are the ones with the fewest ingredients. I had the best pizza I’ve ever had my whole life in Naples (a simple buffalo mozzarella cheese magherita pizza) and when I was taught how to make pasta with only a few ingredients, it actually was full of flavor and tasted delicious! It’s all about how you cook it and the quality of the ingredients you use.

Be weary if you try to cook anything else though. I offered to cook a Chinese meal for my Italian friends but translating ingredients like ‘bok choy’ is not exactly easy. I nearly killed 5 Italians when attempting to cook a honey and chilli chicken dish as the chillis are not the same as the ones in London!

I traveled to Rome, Tuscany, Naples, Capri, and Positano during this time. I got up to some funny adventures such as helping a friend in Rome with the video clip for his song. The pop song features an American girl trying to order food in Italian and then a big, fat cook starts rapping in Italian about food. I featured as the Asian tourist and we got up to some crazy situations such as getting in trouble with the police for bringing a sheep onto the famous Spanish Steps in Rome.

With the rest of the places I visited in Italy, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves…

Melissa in Positano

Relais Blu Restaurant in Capri

Blue Grotto, Capri

Adventures After Italy

After Italy, I flew to the US where I experienced flying on a WW2 biplane (but nearly threw up in the air when it started doing Cuban 8s and 360 degree flips) and went to the best street party, Bay to Breakers in San Francisco, with a bunch of guys and girls from LA dressed as prisoners and hot cops.

In France, I joined in on some friends on their French Riviera trip, the highlight being meeting Kim and Robs’ film producer friend, Matt. His butler picked my friends and I up where we then had lunch at his villa in Monaco where I was inspired by his entrepreneurial spirit and life stories.

I then hopped over to Spain where I went on a road trip with Spanish friends from San Sebastian. We went to a medieval festival in Longrono, did basque dancing in Laguardia, and then visited Frank Gehry’s Marqués De Riscal hotel and winery in Elciego which was a modern, artistically beautiful twisted mess of colored steel in the middle of nowhere. I heard that even Angelina and Brad Pitt got lost and had to ask for directions to a lucky Spanish local when they tried to find it.

I spent a month traveling after Italy and it was definitely a lot more cost effective learning Italian in Sorrento than jumping from country to country. Learning another language is a great mini-retirement option and you pick up a useful skill. If you book a language course in Europe, a good time to book is during spring when it’s warm and the classes are smaller and traveling is cheaper than the summer peak season.

Overall, I had an amazing time and would love to go back one day and learn more Italian. Io amo l’Italia!!

To keep up to date with Melissa’s adventures, follow her here.

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