3029 Possible move to Bergamo :)

I am interested to know why you have chosen Bergamo.

My husband has been offered a job in Bergamo is one good enough reason. And my son is an Inter Milan fan.

Hi Sue

I think I would need more details to advise you properly. Is the job intended to be a longterm one? Is your son academic does he want to go to university? Is he a gifted linguist? Have you discussed oit with his teachers?

Every situation is different and young lads will adapt and integrate at different rates. I would say your options are:
1) to stay with son in UK until GCSEs out of the way while husband works in Italy it will only need be about 150 days in a 365 day year that you are apart
2) son boards at a different school or with landlady/friend/relative until GCSEs out of the way it will only need be about 150 days in a 365 day year that you are apart
3) your son attends an international day school in Bergamo (if one exists) with the aim of sitting the International Baccalaureate after 3 or 4 years
4) your son attends a Swiss boarding school in the Engadine valley which is quite easily accessible from Bergamo via the marvellous Bernina express
railway: Tirano to Chur
5) you don't live in Bergamo but 100km away in Varese (home to the expat community) and your son attends an international or American school.
6) your son enters a local Italian school where he will most probably receive extra help with learning the language (as do immigrant children entering England). However I offer this as a cautionary tale: I recently spoke to an Italian woman working at the local post here who was born of Calabrian parents in England. The family moved back to Italy (Tuscany) when she was 13 and she admits that some 25 years later she still cannot write properly in Italian.

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7) ... and to avoid teasing, switch his allegiance to AC Milan! ;)

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Before we moved to Italy we did a lot of ad hoc research of people who had relocated during thier childhood.
One interesting trivial point is that nearly 100% of famous actors seem to have moved while they were kids.
We found, by talking to many people, that nearly all who had moved before they turned 10 were outgoing, confident and quite accomplished people. On the other hand those that had moved after they turned 12 had remembered the experience clearly as a negative and tended to be less confident people. It seemed to me that before puperty people are defined by their environment and afterward by their peers. If you take away their peers they have a more difficult time defining who they are.
I hasten to add that this was only a rough research on our part, and as you are doing, we asked everyone we came across who may have been able to shed some light on the experiece.

Thank you for all your replies. I have decided to wait until he has finished his GCSE's and then decide. Have to sell house as well. I don't think he will have a problem settling in. Forgot to mention that he is half Italian and spend two years at La Scuola Elementare. Has a cosmopolitan attitude and wears his Inter Milan shirt with pride.

Thanks again.
Sue