Doris Day

Before moving to Sardinia (and after!) I scoured this site for information and real life experiences to assist with my retired husband, eleven year old daughter and two dogs' transition from an average UK life to small town Italian living, I'm very grateful for all the help and information that the generous people on this forum are willing to provide and it got me thinking that I never make any contributions myself, so I thought I'd let you know how we have got on so far........

School..... Well thankfully the mums on the forum had prepared me for all the rather odd things that happen at school, strikes with 24 hr notice, tonnes of homework, teaching methods, parent/teacher consultations, school trips, where to get cheap zainos and how the kids are assessed, thank you without your info I really wouldn't have been any support for her at all. I also was able to provide the school with vaccination records, previous school reports and the school books from her last year at school in the UK and they were able to assess and "process" her really quickly and based on that information was placed in the final year of primary school.
My daughter, George, has made great friends and is able to play out with them in the evenings and go to the pizzeria in a little gang without adults, something she just couldn't do in England. The end of year report was a shock though, she managed to get "10's" in every subject!
She has also joined the local swimming team, she started in September last year and had to wait until May this year to be able to compete as a foreign athlete and receive Italian Swimming Federation membership, in June she qualified for the regional finals and this weekend was part of the squad to win the regional championship in Sassari.

Language... Hmmmm, OH and I are still completely pants, my grammar stinks and my pronunciation is excruciatingly awful, but most people are very generous and I have been lucky enough to make a few good friends and many acquaintances and appear to make myself understood! Of course my daughter jabbers away and occasionally translates for me, nobody at school speaks anything other than the odd word of English so she had no choice but to pick it up quickly.

Residency- Thanks to the information and experiences that I had read about on this forum I had all the relevant documents apostilled, translated and legalised in the UK before we left ( thank you xx) and we became residents within two weeks of arriving!!

The thing that strikes me most about living here is to just slow down and plan well in advance if you are working to a deadline ( our Italian car was ordered three months before the UK car was due to be driven back, with a projected delivery time of 4 weeks after the order was placed, it arrived two days before the three month deadline ..eeeek)

But many of the problems, from car insurance to rubbish collection has been made so much easier to negotiate by being able to consult the archives on here, so thank you very much, I'm not sure we could have settled so well without your help.

37100

Thanks for the update! Glad to hear that you are settling in well. You'll get the hang of Italian. I find that Italians appreciate the effort.
Clever little girl you have there!� ����

37100

Thanks for the update! Glad to hear that you are settling in well. You'll get the hang of Italian. I find that Italians appreciate the effort.
Clever little girl you have there!😁

JACHA

Congratulations. Sounds like your family has settled in very well.

Pica

Well done and you clearly have a little star in your daughter.

Doris Day

Thank you