Here I am, being a blogger...

I've been wanting to start writing a blog for over a year. I was actually planning to start one last year in the fall, mainly with recipes I was trying and home projects I was undertaking. I figured it would be fun for me, and it would be an easy way to keep track of all of the crazy cooking experiments I seem to always find myself in the middle of. My husband (Jon) and I are ministers and we were working with a youth ministry at the time, and most of my experimenting happened on Mondays (our "weekend") so I wanted to have a cutesy name like Monday Musings or Monday Fundays. Then at the end of October last year, we were offered jobs in Milan, Italy (which we accepted after a visit in December) and our lives got flip turned upside down. We sold everything we owned (actually, just gave most of it away), said goodbye to our family and friends and moved here five months ago (at the end of May 2014).

So, not only did our lives change, but my previously non-existent blog changed as well. It was supposed to be recipes and and DIY projects (Pinteresting stuff), but now I don't even know precisely what it will be. Hopefully still some recipes (I do live in Italy now), but it will also be tales of our travels, lessons I am learning living here, how to be an American living in Italy, and maybe some commentaries on the people I meet. It will still be a way for me to keep track of what I am learning, but it will be processing a whole new life rather than just new recipes and projects. It's also an easy way of keeping family and friends updated. Maybe some of it will still seem Pinterest-worthy, but life often seems more glamorous on social media than it is in reality and I hope I can somehow communicate the gratitude I feel to live in Italy along with the heartbreak that I still feel from leaving my home, and also the emotional roller coaster that has always been my life.

I would also like to apologize in advance for my 'writing style' - I write the way I think: in MASSIVE run-on sentences of countless "related" thoughts strung together. I am working on changing this, but I am just not good with punctuation. I don't use it correctly, I use it to communicate the emotion I am trying to convey or the pauses I would have taken were I saying my sentence out loud. I love commas and dashes because they seem to work well with my brain flow. I hate periods (ha!) because they just feel so final... I'm one of those people who takes forever to pick a meal at a restaurant because I just hate eliminating options, and periods somehow feel like option-eliminators to me. Also, because my brain "associates" easily (*jumps between topics*) my blog may be partially written in Lorelai references and Bible verses - which basically sums up my mind. All hail queen of the non sequitur. It's a big ball of weird in there. But at least I know I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.

I'm an American expatriate living in Italy, eating lots of pasta, learning Italian, loving my husband, serving an amazing church, and having all kinds of [sometimes unplanned] adventures.

Per i miei amici italiani - quando sarò più brava in italiano forse posso tradurre qualche "posts". Ma non cela faccio per ora - mi spiace! (Anche - sempre controllate il mio italiano - devo imparare!)


Love,
Rachel