The one where Lauren writes a very honest blog entry!

I normally settle into new places pretty quickly. When I was younger, on family holidays, I was always the first to make my new room look like ‘my own’, as I unpacked and put out nic-naks, and quickly felt at ease in my new environment. When I arrived in Japan...sure, the first week was weird, strange and new...but I never really felt homesick. And yet, here, only a 3 hour flight from home, in beautiful Italy, I felt an instant unease and a lack of ‘clicking’. You know, when a place just feels right…and despite the new things to get used to, you can still click with the place and are excited to explore it. Well here in Lecce...I’m sad to say that..almost from day 1…I didn’t want to be here. It’s hard to put my finger on what exactly I didn’t like, or didn’t feel happy with...I just felt really alone and out of place here.

Ria, Rich and I met up with Alison, another of the school’s teachers, and who had been here last year. She took us around the town, and showed us the local shops and cafes etc. Lecce is a nice town…it’s fine, it really is….I just didn’t really warm to it. From its enthusiastic write-up in Lonely Planet, and its description as the ‘Florence of the South’, I had expected great things, and a beautiful, exciting, vibrant place. It does have a lovely old-town, and some amazing buildings…but I just found myself disinterested in it all, and longed to be anywhere else but this corner of Europe. I will write a more balanced account of the town later (and put some piccies on as soon as I get back to wifi access back in UK). But for now, all I can say is that Lecce felt like a really small place, and I felt penned in by the tall apartment blocks, and the constant chaotic traffic noises. I guess after coming from Prague, very few places were going to be able to compete in terms of aesthetics and grandeur. But it was more than that…I just didn’t like the noise, and the town, and found the people of the South quite rude (compared to those I’d met on my brief spell in Tuscany 4 years ago)…and I longed to be somewhere where I knew someone….where I had pals to chat to...family to hug...people to interact with on more than a superficial ‘small-talk' level. Imagine a pot * ..put in the first ingredient…homesickness...and then add a great big dollop of what I think may have been reverse-culture-shock…as I wished to be back in my Japanese apartment, with only the sounds of the cicadas and the views of mountains and rice-fields…..and then sprinkle in a liberal handful of work-related niggles…and there you have one recipe for an unsettled and pretty blue Lauren! (Please note...Lauren is now fine, so there is no need for concerned blog-comments!)

Certain things have got easier…and I have got used to different parts of Italian life. However, I need to be somewhere with more people...with more things to do and more chances to have fun and be happy. Lecce, I’m afraid couldn’t be that place, and I only feel content here now, as I know I will be leaving in 4 short weeks. I will leave with my head-held high from sticking it out for a good 10 weeks, and with the knowledge that wherever I go next, it can only be better, and I can only be happier!

Footnote * = apologies for clichéd use of cooking/recipe/pot metaphor!!