The Adventures of Danda and Yaya @lazylauramaisey - Tumblr Blog

One Year In

Ok, after month number 8 of blogging every month, things were thrown up in the air for a bit with a few trips to the UK (one for work, one for fun) and a trip to Luxembourg (fun). Then another trip to the UK for an important person’s birthday. Then another trip to the UK for Yestival, the big annual festival of The YesTribe. So it’s all been a bit hectic in an utterly lovely way. But it does mean…

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Moving To Italy: Eight Months In

This month has been very exciting. With the weather warming up more and more, I spend all my weekends outside – cycling, running, walking, swimming in the sea, climbing in the mountains, campouts under the stars. It is beyond lovely to have the Italian Riviera on my doorstep. I had no idea Liguria was so beautiful before arriving. Everyone knows about the gently rolling hills of Toscana and the…

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Moving To Italy: Seven Months In

Getting past the six month mark feels significant, somehow. Like I’m on the home straight to the even bigger landmark of a year. That I have survived thus far without any major mishaps is a good feeling. I was on the verge of a major mishap last week, however, while trying to put money into my account. The story goes something like this.

Day 1 – I take money to the bank to put into my…

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Moving To Italy: Six Months In

Here I am. It’s been half a year. It’s been a very good half a year, might I add. I have been to places I could never have imagined, seen and done things I had no idea about before and learned a lot about myself and about this country. I’ve learned that it is possible to point to a place on a map then decide to go and create a life there – and for it to be an enjoyable process.

From the outside,…

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Moving To Italy: Five Months In

Month Five has been The Month of People! I’ve had visitors almost back to back for the whole of March and it has been thoroughly lovely showing my friends from England my new home here in Genova. It gives me a sense of pride to introduce people to a life I created entirely for myself. I arrived without any real idea of what would happen and now I wake up every day with a job to go to (that I…

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Moving To Italy: Month Four

Spoiler alert! Month Four has been amazing. After organising a few walks that people joined me on, there seemed to be a recurring theme of people craving community, especially people who have moved here from other places. That got me thinking about the communities I had enjoyed being part of in the UK – Project Awesome (an early morning free fitness workout group) and The YesTribe (getting people…

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"How do you feel about being an ex-pat?"

“How do you feel about being an ex-pat?”

“How do you feel about being an ex-pat?” the man across the table asked me. “I… Um… I… What? A what? I have no idea. I just… I just, sort of, live here. I don’t know.” Even now, this question throws me into a fluster. It just feels like such an alien concept to call myself that. I know, of course, that factually, I am an ex-pat. But the connotations feel all wrong. It has overtones of otherness…

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Moving To Italy: Three Months In

Here I am, sitting on a bus, heading to the mountains, for a weekend of skiing with friends. And I’m super excited. But I’m also excited about life, in general. Life in Italy is good. It may sound like a rather obvious statement from a girl who’s lucky enough to have both mountains and sea on her doorstep but favourable external circumstances do not always indicate inner happiness, as I found out…

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How Andrea Bocelli Helped Me Fall Back In Love

I don’t know if any of you picked up the vibe in some of my posts, but I wasn’t progressing very well with my Italian. Not through lack of effort, not through lack of knowledge but due to fear and nerves. People would speak to me, the words would float into and around my face but the forcefield of nerves surrounding it wouldn’t let anything pentrate. I heard words I knew in rapid succession –…

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Moving To Italy: Two Months In

There’s been a bit of everything in the last month – some ups, a down, lots of uphills, one fall downhill and a lot in between. My little Monday and Thursday routine of walking along this pathway on my way to a little pebbly beach called Boccadasse is now well established. I work about an hour’s walk out from the centre, so on my way back, instead of going directly to the centre, I walk down to…

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The Tobacco Man

A couple of times every week, I go to one of the shops, known as ‘tabacchi’ to buy stamps to send letters or postcards. I like to write letters. Moving to Italy has allowed me to indulge in this now-quaint pastime of laboriously writing down on paper what I could send easily in a text (which would take less half the time to write), then digging out the address of the person I am sending it to,…

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Moving to Italy: One Month In

One month ago today, on 2nd November 2017, I moved out of the flat where I lived in East London, packed a select few belongings, and moved to Genova, in Italy. This was easy and difficult in equal measures. Easy, because I had been mulling the idea over for years, wanting to do it, wondering if I would actually ever do it, preparing myself mentally for it. Difficult, because my whole life was in…

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Campout Fun In The Park

We gathered outside Richmond station in the evening light and after quick hellos, started to make our way up the hill to watch the beautiful red sunset over the river before making our way into the park and finding a little copse of trees with a small clearing, the perfect place for 10+ people to share. Out came the ground sheet and on went the snacks. There were homemade flapjacks, a loaf of…

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Thank You, Italy

I wrote this the day before leaving Italy, on my run from Rome to London: I held the scrunched up napkin in my hands and told my two fellow pilgrims, “This napkin is the pilgrims and my hands are Italy.” Then I wrapped my hands gently around the napkin and held it to my heart. “This is what it feels like to be a pilgrim here.” I have spent the last forty days in Italy, traversing its length from…

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Thoughts on finishing my first marathon

Well, to say I was desperately under-prepared is to put it mildly. I hadn’t trained properly due to two hospital stays in the five weeks leading up to it. This meant that at a best guess, I have probably run about four times in the past month. Not what you’d call ‘training runs’ either, between nine and thirteen miles each time. This may initially sound like a lot but when you consider that a…

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A Farewell To Facebook

It’s hard to know where to start with this. Like a break-up, there’s so much that needs to be said. Like a relationship that has soured, I am becoming someone I don’t want to be when I am with you, Facebook. I am unable to distinguish whether I am proud of myself because of certain achievements or I only become proud when I have shown the world the achievement and the world has given me a…

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Why it's not just about the fun

It’s a strange concept, taking time off work (very unusual for me) and spending money and effort for something that, ultimately, I wouldn’t say was ‘fun.’ My Wellington Run has taken a while to digest but I’ve finally arrived with a solid understanding that it was a very very good thing to have done. Although a part of my brain knew this when I finished, I couldn’t really embrace it because of…

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