3891 Ciao Tutti!

Hi Andria & welcome to the forum!! :)

It's good to hear that you've settled in nicely and made friends with the locals! How did your children take the move?

Feel free to share your experiences of settling in Italy with the rest of us...

Cheers!

The children had help settling in over the summer through some local friends children. It was a bit easier for them when it came time to start school. They found the first 3 months of school very difficult but with a lot of hard work and patience things got a lot easier for them after their first Christmas. Now they are completely at home here and belong to various local clubs. They don't miss England at all and when we went to France last year they could not wait to get back to Italy!;)

Very interesting indeed to hear how things have gone over a timescale of 4 years, a bit of inspiration for us all.

Any other juicy titbits? :D Keep em coming

What would you like to hear about..........any topics in particular?

[QUOTE=Andria]What would you like to hear about..........any topics in particular?[/QUOTE]

I suppose everyones needs are different, but I would be interested in the lot! Seriously though, we are aware of the different hoops you have to jump through to get different things sorted once you move permanently, but what about problems you had, that you never even thought of prior to moving out?

Is there anything you wish you had done differently or things you wish you had investigated more prior to moving?

I am moving out with children later in the year, but feel I should be doing more now to prepare for the move. We have the children enrolled in a village school from september, so that is sorted but should I be doing more?

Sorry.......probably a bit of a difficult question(s) to answer

Ciao!,

It's a bit difficult to know what advise to give without knowing more about your situation i.e. do you have a house already, how habitable is it etc. Do you speak Italian? Are you going to be working?

Having the children enrolled in school already is a great start.......general advise would be to have all your paperwork in order including copies of all of your children's school reports. You will also need a history of the children's vaccinations i.e what and when and any childhood illnesses like measles, chicken pox, mumps..........preferably from your current doctors surgery.

Getting your residency sorted quickly is also important so you can then register with a doctor etc (although you can still use them without your residency ..........you just have to pay more!) You will need lots of passport sized photographs for various documents. It helps to make a list of all the things you need to sign up for and then try to locate them as soon as you can.........make sure you get known at your local bar..........once people get to know you they will only be too pleased to advise you and help you. You will also meet people quickly through the school.

The only thing I wish we had was a telephone line ( a long story but if you do not have one order one now!) and help from an english speaking local ( they did not exist when we movd here!). My Italian was beginner level after studying 2 years at school ( many years before) and although I understood a lot and could make myself understood, the terminology for all of the forms, taxes etc. was very hard to grasp. What did not help matters for me was that people spoke in Dialect........even officials.

Where are you moving to and how old are your children? Let me know if you are in need of any other info............the main thing is to have patience and remember that Rome was not built in a day..!

Thanks Andria for your advice.

We are renting a house to give us time to locate our dream one and also to see how we settle in.

One question for you, when your children started school (our children are 9, 6 & 5) did you accompany them not only to the school during their first few days, but in the classroom as well? The school have given us this option after my wife asked them, but I feel uncomfortable with this, probably cause I cannot see what help this would be and it may even be a bit of a hinderence for them to settle in quickly and besides I am can speak very little Italian, my wife is at a very high standard but certainly not fluent.

Any thoughts from anyone would be good.

Thanks

It's really up to you but I did not accompany the children into their classes....just to the classroom. At the time they started school mine were 7 and 9 years old. You might want to stay part of the first morning with the 5 year old but you will know your child best.

One of the things I forgot to mention before is that we found an Italian tutor who gave them 6 lessons of Italian before we came over. It just covered the basics like name, age, where you live, hobbies, time etc. but did give the children confidence over the summer as they could both answer and ask basic questions of the children they were playing with.....maybe your wife could do this? I also bought various picture/ word dictionaries before we left.

When we were in Italy the school gave me the number of their English teacher (although he was not a fluent speaking english person by any means!! In fact I was better off speaking to him in Italian!), so I could call him before school started to ask about uniform, books etc. He showed them around on the first day and they felt they had someone they could try to communicate with if there was a problem.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Andria