The Bittersweet Life

In this introspective episode, Katy says goodbye to Rome the night before she flies back to the States. And as she contemplates the end of another chapter, her thoughts turn to John Keats.

Why John Keats, you ask? At the start of her time in Rome, Katy visited the Non-Catholic Cemetery and the grave of the Young English Poet. On her last day, she happened to find herself standing in front of the museum dedicated to him and his contemporary Percy Shelley. She decided to go in.

On their final episode of the season {ARRIVEDERCI}, Katy and Tiffany discuss what it's like to be in a city like Rome without having the time to explore it, and how it feels when a trip comes to an end and, while you may have done what you needed to do, you didn't see what you wanted to see.

But that's ok. Because Rome will always be here. Waiting patiently for Katy's next visit.

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SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

DONATE: Open your laptop and visit The Bittersweet Life and click the donate button on the right side of the page. The show needs your support to continue.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email at [email protected].

You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – Better yet, tag #thebittersweetlife with your story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

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Are we the masters of our own fate, or merely unwitting pawns in a larger scheme, the irresistible pull of destiny guiding all of our so-called decisions? Or is the reality somewhere in the middle?

In their second live show, recorded at The Beehive Hotel & Hostel, Katy and Tiffany explore their own beliefs on this vast and bewildering topic, and what it means for their own lives and the paths they have chosen.

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SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

DONATE: Open your laptop and visit The Bittersweet Life and click the donate button on the right side of the page. The show needs your support to continue.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email at [email protected].

You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – Better yet, tag #thebittersweetlife with your story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

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In honor of Labor Day, Katy and Tiffany take the week off from their labor of love, The Bittersweet Life podcast.

But in this special, super-short episode we ask for your feedback for three upcoming episodes. Listen to the episode to hear our questions so you can be featured on the show!

Email your stories (typed or voice messages work) to [email protected].

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SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

DONATE: Open your laptop and visit The Bittersweet Life and click the donate button on the right side of the page. The show needs your support to continue.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email at [email protected].

You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – Better yet, tag #thebittersweetlife with your story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

©Web and show content can only be used

As Katy nears the end of her time in Rome (this time), Tiffany can't help but ask, will you stay?

Or, more precisely, would you stay? Would you stay in Rome IF all the conditions allowed it: work visa, gainful employment, apartment?

Her answer might surprise you.

And it opens a discussion: how do you know when it's time to go home, when it's time to stay put, when it's time to move on, when it's time to hit the road in search of a new adventure?

How much do age and career play into it? Does there come a time in life when it's "too late" to take off in a new direction, or is that simply a self-imposed limitation?

And once you've been an expat in one country, are you more or less likely to change countries a second time?

We discuss this and more on the latest installment of The Bittersweet Life, Episode 220 {STAYING?}.

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SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

DONATE: Open your laptop and visit The Bittersweet Life and click the donate button on the right side of the page. The show needs your support to continue.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email at [email protected].

You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – Better yet, tag #thebittersweetlife with your story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

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Moving abroad isn't just for twenty-somethings. Our guest this week proves just that.

Jackie was a successful lawyer in her early 40s and living in Chicago when she realized she wasn't content feeding her wanderlust with short, occasional trips to Europe—she had to move there. And when she finally decided to take the plunge, she didn't do it by halves. No leave of absence from her job—she quit. No storage unit for her clothes and furniture—she sold the lot of it. She was fully committed, with no escape plan if things went haywire.

And go haywire they did. Her first attempt at expat life in central Spain blew up in her face, but her determination to make a life for herself in Europe meant she didn't give up. Nearly a year later, she is happily settled in Milan, attending a graduate program and learning to speak Italian. She may not have the expat thing completely figured out yet, but she knows one thing: she doesn't regret leaving everything behind and following her dreams for a second.

Listen to her interview to learn how, when things don't work out as planned, sometimes it's the best thing that could have happened.

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Additional resources:

Article: Moving Abroad: Fate and the Allure of Italy

Tiffany's Advice: So You Want to Move to Rome?

Need legal advice? Try JSS Justice

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SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

DONATE: Open your laptop and visit The Bittersweet Life and click the donate button on the right side of the page. The show needs your support to continue.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email at [email protected].

You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – Better yet, tag #thebittersweetlife with your story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

©Web and show content can only be used

A postcard captures a moment in time—a literal snapshot of a place. But according to Katy, people make the best postcards. If you visit a place often enough, every time you go back, you'll inevitably find faces you've seen before. Locals whom you've noticed many times—and who have perhaps noticed you—although you may know nothing about them. May have never even spoken… and yet they are every bit a landmark of your experience of the city as an Eiffel Tower or a Colosseum.

Maybe it's the cashier at the supermarket down the street from the apartment you once rented, perhaps it's the accordion player who always sits on the same corner, or the young mother in the park who has a new baby every time you see her. How they change or don't change, age or seemingly defy the ravages of time, how their eyes might linger on you with a glimmer of half-recognition before returning to their inner world—these are the snapshots that truly color a city, and a return traveler's experience of it.

Katy and Tiffany explore this idea in Episode 218: POSTCARDS.

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SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

DONATE: Open your laptop and visit The Bittersweet Life and click the donate button on the right side of the page. The show needs your support to continue.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email at [email protected].

You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – Better yet, tag #thebittersweetlife with your story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

©Web and show content can only be used

Want to raise a bilingual child? Whether you are an expat or not, in a mixed-culture relationship or not, it is possible to raise your child in two (or more) languages, and the benefits you will pass on to your child are significant. But how do you go about it?

Today Katy sits down with British mum Kristie Prada, author and creator of the blog Mamma Prada. She and her Italian husband live in the UK and are serious about raising their children to speak both languages flawlessly. In her effort to do just that, she has become an expert on childhood bilingualism, and shares that knowledge onto her blog.

On this episode, Kristie shares her favorite resources for raising children in two language, the most interesting of which is double-language book series by One Third Stories. Instead of presenting the two languages side by side, these books introduce foreign words into the text slowly, until they eventually take over. Before you know it, your child is reading an entire book in a second language! She also shares the brilliant idea of teaching your child about the other country and its culture as a way of piquing his or her interest in the language (instead of the other way around), and offers tips and tricks for staying strong when your older child resists the minority language.

If bilingualism is something you want for your child, this is the episode for you!

This episode also features a bonus appearance by none other than Tiffany's son Aurelio, who offers a peek into the mind of a bilingual toddler, and answers Katy's hard-hitting questions, such as, "What does a cow say?"

You can also find Kristie Prada on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

DONATE: Open your laptop and visit The Bittersweet Life and click the donate button on the right side of the page. The show needs your support to continue.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email at [email protected].

You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – Better yet, tag #thebittersweetlife with your story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

©Web and show content can only be used

We often talk about expat life in big cities like Rome. But what's it like to be a foreigner in a small village where everyone knows everyone?

On this week's episode {ORVIETO}, we catch up with two Americans living in the tiny central Italian town of Orvieto—two expats whom we interviewed for the first time back in 2014. Toni De Bella (Episode 34: Venture) moved to Orvieto in 2012 alone after raising her son. Linda Martinez (Episode 33: Parents) is the owner of The Beehive Hostel in Rome; she's been in Italy for most of the past few decades, but she and her husband Steve Brenner decided to settle in Orvieto with their three daughters several years ago in search of a slower pace of life.

We reconnect with them (together this time) four years later to see how life in small-town Italy is treating them. What do they still love about Orvieto? And what do they wish visitors to Italy knew about it? What has started to wear on them? What—if anything—makes them consider moving back to the big city? And how do they know when the town has become "theirs"?

Listen in on this casual conversation among friends, and you might just decide to add Orvieto to your next Italian vacation itinerary…or sell everything you own and move there like Toni and Linda did. Episode 216: ORVIETO.

Want more from Toni and Linda?

To learn more about Orvieto and why Toni fell in love with it, visit her blog, Orvieto or Bust. You can also follow her on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. Or check out her episode on House Hunters International.

If you're planning a trip to Rome, check out Linda's family-run hostel, The Beehive. You can also find her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

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SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

DONATE: Open your laptop and visit The Bittersweet Life and click the donate button on the right side of the page. The show needs your support to continue.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email at [email protected].

You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – Better yet, tag #thebittersweetlife with your story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

©Web and show content can only be used with written permission.

After the wild week in the news in the US, Katy and Tiffany take a brief break from their recent Rome-based episodes to discuss the events surrounding the now infamous Helsinki Summit. In the course of their commiserations, they wonder what is harder: having to live through the chaos as it unfolds in your own back yard, or living a world away in an expat bubble and not having anyone to talk to about it. What's worse: inundation or isolation?

Which leads to another observation: when you live so long out of your home country, and especially when you acquire citizenship to your adopted country and start a family there, you can begin to lose the allegiance to your home country. Does that make you less patriotic? Can expats be excused for closing their eyes and focusing on life in their new country, or should they remain just as involved as they would be if they were still living in their hometown.

Katy and Tiffany discuss these and more related topics on Episode 215 {SUMMIT} of The Bittersweet Life podcast.

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SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

DONATE: Open your laptop and visit The Bittersweet Life and click the donate button on the right side of the page. The show needs your support to continue.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email at [email protected].

You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – Better yet, tag #thebittersweetlife with your story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

©Web and show content can only be used with written permission.

Have you ever walked into someone's house in Japan with your shoes on and had a room full of people laugh at you? (Katy has.) Have you ever traipsed into a room in an Italian home that has been freshly mopped and been given the evil eye by the lady of the house? (Tiffany has.)

Part of living in a foreign culture is learning (often the hard way) that some things that are totally acceptable back home are, at best, a faux pas in your adopted country, and, at worst, a humiliating gaff. Picking up on the social rules of your new country is part of adjusting to life abroad. To a certain extent, all expats go through it.

But what makes things rude in one culture and acceptable in another? What does it say about the people of those countries, and what they value? Why is it ok to litter on the street in Italy, but not ok to wash your hands in the kitchen sink? Why is it fine, in Italy, to wave to get your waiter's attention, but unspeakably rude to leave a shop without saying "grazie, arrivederci"—the exact opposite of which is true in the US?

And what happens when you pick up habits that are perfectly acceptable in your new country, and take them back home with you, where they are seen as downright rude? (Case in point: after a one-year stint in Rome, polite, mild-mannered Katy has taken to cutting lines, a heinous crime in America and merely an eye-rolling annoyance in Italy.)

We discuss these social conundrums and etiquette paradoxes and try to make sense of it all on this week's new episode, {RUDE}.

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SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

DONATE: Open your laptop and visit The Bittersweet Life and click the donate button on the right side of the page. The show needs your support to continue.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email at [email protected].

You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – Better yet, tag #thebittersweetlife with your story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

©Web and show content can only be used with written permission.