admin April 2nd, 2012

Family Life in Rome

How does a young woman from Connecticut, fall in love with a Roman in Guatemala, and three sons later, lives large in the Eternal City? Below is Alysa’s story, and now we can look forward to her posts, from Rome, about life in Rome, on the AHA blog. Welcome to the AHA Team, Alysa, we are so happy to have you!

My name is Alysa Weinstein, and for the last seven years, I have been living in Rome. I was born in NYC and grew up in the Fairfield county suburbs. I was a lucky little girl! I have three younger brothers and nothing could have prepared me better for raising three little boys of my own.

After playing soccer and dancing and singing my way through Greenwich Country Day School and Greenwich High School, I went off to The University of Wisconsin ? Madison, where I did not make the soccer team, gave up my dreams of musical theater, and fell madly in love with Art History and, in particular, Italian art.

After my freshman year, my cousin and I backpacked from Milan to Naples. The adventures are blog-worthy! Two years later, I came back to Rome for my junior summer where I studied the language in the morning and in the afternoon I studied the people, the food, cinema, sights, and everything dolce vita. I caught ?the Eternal City? bug.

After graduating from University, I was introduced to an Italian art dealer with a gallery in NYC and also one in Rome. She hired me on the spot, and while my professional relationship with Carla lasted five years and I worked only and always at the NYC gallery, she is still today a very, very important point of reference in Rome and in my life.

Cut to 2002. On a whim, my brother Justin and I planned a 10-day excursion, vacation, detoxification to Guatemala and Honduras. As we flew away from NYC, the last thing on my mind was finding true love, let alone meeting an Italian. But destiny has a strange way of working . . . and on my first night, I met my husband Carmine, and it was love at first sight. (When he walked into the bar, I was 100% sure.)

So after six months of long-distance phone calls and Alitalia overnight flights, he moved to NYC. One year later, I sold my interior design company and we moved to Rome where we celebrated our wedding with 200 of our favorite people (major blog entry). And three little boys later, I am pretty sure that my love affair with Italy is still going strong, even if the daily life is always more challenging. But if it weren?t, there would be no blog!

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