Hi from Soriano

Hi, I've just found Pink Italy and am loving reading all the interesting posts.

We're an Australian family who've recently (arrived at the end of August) relocated to Italy and are now living our Italian Immersion dream (after 7 long years of planning and no EU passport!). We're now settled in Soriano nel Cimino to hopefully learn the language and provide our two boys (Hamish 11 & Dane 6) with an Italian bilingual education.

My husband, Ian is playing Mr Mum, whilst I try and establish some sort of job or business here to enable us to extend my Permission to Stay.

We'd love to meet other expat families in Lazio or Italy and be able to share our experiences and also to be able to just chat about all the differences in our lives now.

I'm a huge supporter of languages education in Australia and are involved in a number of different ventures trying to get second language learning compulsory in the public education system in Australia. It's a long, slow challenge but I'm convinced it's doable.

Part of the reason we're here is to see how other countries manage to teach children as young as 3 years old a 2nd and sometimes a 3rd language without any problems.

So any stories about your kids and how they've dealt with the language would also be great.

Both our boys had some Italian lessons in Australia before we left, but spoke very little Italian. We have no language other than English (of course!) in our families so no opportunity to use the little we learnt before we left Oz.

The boys are now attending the local scuola and really loving the challenge of not only coping with the very different education system but also being taught entirely in Italian! Ian and I are struggling as we don't have regular contact with Italian speakers and are planning of enrolling into a language course as soon as we're able to take a break from translating the boys homework for them!! I'll leave all the trials and tribulations about that for another post.

In the meantime a big "Hi" and I hope to meet some of you in other posts soon.

Ciao
Peta

Nice to meet you Peta and welcome to the forum!

Welcome Peta
I have the flu, so am feeling really rubbish, so just a quick reply for now. MY OH is dying to move to Australia, but I dont' think they are gonna let us! My 3 kids are growing up bilingual. Matteo started italian scool at 4.5, Daniel (3.5) and Giac (2) jsut started in Sep. I am happy to answer any questions.
I should think it will take your kids a while to really get fully conversant. Matteo didn't speak at all in the first few months, but by the end of the first year he was happy. It took a vouple of years to loose the accent though, now u can't tell he is English unless he actually speaks it (and ironically even thoguh we only apeak English at home, his English is somewhat Italianised').

Hi Clare & Lizzie

Thanks for the welcome and replys to my post.

Lizzie your kids bilingual experience sounds interesting and it would be interesting for them to meet my kids to see which language they'd choose to communicate in. Yes, my two boys are now where close to being fluent, however just over the past week they have been starting to use more and more Italian at home which is really interesting to watch. They're both into music and are now downloading a lot of Italian hit songs and learning the words.

I'm actually in Roma domani for work. My plan is to be in by about 9am and do a bit of shopping before my meetings start at 1.30pm. The Australia Italia office is in Via Lombardia, just off Via Veneto, any chance of either of you being around there for a coffee sometime before 1pm?

It would be good to meet and have a chat? If not then we're all going to be in Roma on Saturday 12th December. I have a colleague that's trying to start an Italian Aussie Rules Team in Roma and he's running his first training session and get together. Any of your OH's interested in Aussie Rules??

Let me know and maybe we can have a Pink Italy catchup while the boys run round the paddock!!

Ciao
Peta

Me and Jess are in Roma central tomorrow afternoon Peta but it will be after 1pm more like 2pm i think.

I would love to but it takes me an hour and a half to get into Rome and then I have to pick up the 2 little ones at 12.30pm and then my other son at 4.20pm. Maybe when the kids are doing a full day I might get a bit of freedom! I will look into the 12th, sounds like fun 12.

With regard to the language, my son thinks of Italian in connection with play and friends, so would probably speak in Italian, unless he was speficially told to speak in English. It would be fun to get them together!
Ex