(techno music)
(foreign language)
- My name is Alex and I'm taking over the Instagram story
for ITA today to tell you about my daily life
as an English teacher here in Rome.
I am on my way to get a little breakfast,
and I'll use that time to answer
the gigantic slew of questions that they have for me
about my life here in Rome and my super gay life.
Okay, so I'm walking from breakfast now,
and I'll tell you a little bit about myself.
Originally, I'm from Texas.
I have a bachelors in music education,
but unfortunately music education is underpaid worldwide so,
I got my English certification
so that I could make my dreams of living abroad come true.
So, anyway, my company, or the school that I work for,
does want you to have a bachelors degree.
And also, my online company that I work for.
I work for VIPKid.
They, I think, want you to have a bachelors degree,
I'm not actually sure,
but I do know that things are starting to get a little bit
more serious for online teaching in China,
and they want you to have a TEFL certificate usually,
for online teaching.
So, I will add my link for my online teaching.
Hopefully I can do that thing where it's like, swipe up.
We'll see if that happens.
But anyways, it's VIPKid.
And so, usually I woke about four hours at VIPKid,
and then I work three to four hours at the language school
that I work at.
But summer's a little weird because--
So summer's just a little bit weird
'cause all of the students are traveling,
both the ones here in Italy
and the ones that I teach online.
So, today actually,
I have to go to the school to teach some morning lessons,
and then I'm going back home to teach some online lessons,
and then I'm going--
Ooh, running across the street.
And then I'm going back to the school tonight
to teach some more lessons, and then I'm done.
And so I typically just get all my errands
and stuff run in between lessons.
So I found the school that I work at here, actually,
from the girl who took over the ITA story last year,
who lived in Rome.
And so she talked to me
and she helped me figure out a bunch of the logistics.
And so anyway, I work for a school called British School
and they are one of the better schools in Rome
and they're one of the higher paying schools in Rome.
And so, whenever I got here, I got here in September,
I didn't bother trying to find a job beforehand also,
because you can't really do that here,
you kind of have to be here.
And then, interview in person.
So I got here in September
before prime hiring time in October,
and I interviewed just all the schools
that I could find on Google Maps.
I just searched language school.
And anyways, I went to this school,
I gave them my resume, I had an interview with them.
I liked them, they liked me, I considered it done.
And so I didn't really actually interview
at any other schools.
But if you come here in September,
for sure you're gonna find a job.
(people talking)
So I wanted to also give some good insight
to my gay life here in Rome.
Before I moved here, I was already out.
I was living a super gay life in,
you know, like a platinum card gay life in America.
I'm from Dallas, and so, we obviously have the Gayborhood
in Dallas and we had great clubs and parties,
everything was good.
And so I had been to London Pride also,
and I was just excited for gay life in Europe.
And then, whenever I got here, I kind of realized that--
We obviously have the Gayborhood in Dallas,
and we had great clubs and great parties,
everything was good.
And so I had been to London Pride also,
and I was just excited for gay life in Europe.
And then, whenever I got here, I kind of realized that,
Rome is just as conservative as Texas is.
They're a little more hostile actually.
Pretty much daily, I'm verbally harassed in the streets,
just about how I look and maybe how I act.
But I never say anything back.
You know, don't hate me 'cause you ain't me.
But that's none of my business.
So anyway, I just, I don't let it affect me
and my main goal really
is just to spread happiness and kindness.
Like, I think we need more of that in the world.
And so, I let them say their piece,
if they feel better afterwards, then that's that.
But really, my main goal as far as like an actual,
just a gay person living abroad
is to make successes as an openly gay person.
I don't want anyone to think that
being gay has to stop them from doing anything.
And I felt the same way in college,
like I just wanted to do anything successful,
make achievements,
just so that I could kind of pave the way
for any other gay person thinking that
it's actually going to be some kind of roadblock for them.
And I actually found this quite interesting whenever I,
you know, traveled here, Italy is a lot like America,
in that the south is a lot more conservative than the north.
So, like in Sicily, it was extremely conservative,
and then I went up to the north, to celebrate my birthday,
and I had a lovely gay time.
And Rome is like right there in the middle.
So I experienced good and I experienced bad.
Like, they have gay clubs, but it's really like nightly.
So like one club will be gay on a Friday night,
another club is gay on a Saturday night.
They have some clubs that are gay all the time,
but it's not like--
Okay, I stopped recording that
'cause I was starting to talk about not important stuff.
But, I wanted to talk about just like being gay
with the students here.
Like I said, because it is just a little bit conservative.
And the gay crowd here,
the gay population is not very vocal.
So, from me, being as obviously gay as I am,
I did have concerns after I got here,
that it might be a problem for my students,
but the ones who can tell that I'm gay and know that I'm gay
have had no problem with it.
I think it just goes along the lines of like,
if you're being kind and you're being humble,
and you're like, spreading happiness,
then obviously they're not gonna say anything.
I'm on my way, actually right now,
to teach two middle school girls.
And as we know, middle schoolers can be the worst,
but these middle schoolers are lovely.
They think I'm really cute, I think they have a crush on me.
They don't know I'm gay,
so that's gonna come as quite a shock.
But no, its been fine in the professional world.
And lastly, I think I should add that all of my views
and everything I've said about the gay life here,
the population, the representation, it's nothing bad.
It's just that its in comparison
to what I'm used to in America.
So its on just a little bit smaller of a scale.
But all of my friends are gay,
all of my friends are LGBTQ+ supporters,
and it wasn't hard to find them either.
The Italian people, and the Italian culture
is all very lovely.
And so, it's nice that I get to experience that
in a similar way to what they like,
what is their normal,
while also getting to continue doing
what was my normal back in the States.
All right, so visa.
I'm here under the table.
I've overstayed my tourist visa for about eight months,
and it hasn't been a problem.
I haven't tried to leave the Italian border yet,
I'm going to Greece in September, so fingers crossed.
But my company has been fine paying me under the table,
and I'm fine being paid under the table.
So, if that's one of your worries, about living here,
I would honestly say don't worry.
There's gonna be people who try to turn you away from that,
but really, it has not been as big of an issue
as some people try make it out to be.
(foreign language)
All right, so I'll give you an apartment tour.
This is the entryway.
And it's not huge, by the way.
Not many apartments are.
But, this is actually my second apartment.
So that's the entryway.
This is the little hallway.
And this is the bathroom.
Typical washer in the bathroom.
I have a bathtub, which I love.
Because I can take baths, which I never have,
but I plan to.
This is the kitchen.
It gives me very friends vibes, I like it.
It's very colorful.
And fancy coffee machine.
We have a big balcony, this is my roommates balcony though.
So I'm not gonna go in there.
He's still here.
And then, this is my room.
Thank you Zara Home.
I love the ceiling, kind of vault in.
There's my little set up.
Gotta keep my computer off the table,
or it's gonna overheat in the summer heat.
Him again.
And then, balcony.
And my favorite part about my room
is that my balcony opens up completely,
which is nice in the summer time
because it gets very hot here.
Then I have a nice little view.
And that's pretty much it.
That's the apartment.
So I actually didn't decide on Rome originally.
I decided on Florence 'cause I thought it was probably the
he most beautiful city that I had been to in Italy.
But Rome has over like a hundred language schools,
so the job opportunities here
are a lot easier than the other cities.
The school does not sponsor me for a visa
and it's kind of hard to find a school that will.
So unless you have a student visa,
or work visa, then don't expect your school to do that.
All you need is a codice fiscale, which is like a tax code,
and they will pay you that way.
So everything is pretty much--
This is my gym.
It's pretty nice actually.
Like, it's probably one of the nicer ones in Rome.
And I definitely splurged because I love exercising.
And I didn't want a gym
that would kind of make me feel uncomfortable,
and one of the best parts is when the studio is empty,
you can--
here, and you can choose like workout videos to go from.
And so since I don't have that much time today,
and I want abs like her,
I'm gonna choose something nice for me.
So, I was on my way to work,
but I decided to get off the metro to show you guys
just how easy it is to get to everything
that's so famous here.
So like, this is just on my way to work,
and it's the Colosseum,
just kind of like casually there.
And then, up that street, is--
So, I took another metro stop to show you guys
this neighborhood, it's called Monte.
It's my favorite neighborhood for shopping
and eating and drinking and pretty much everything
that I enjoy.
And also getting pizza.
And one more thing before I get to work,
I work really close to the Vatican.
And so I love to come to St. Peter's Square,
and take a coffee and just sit and kind of watch
the fountains and look at the pines,
which are my favorite thing here in Rome.
And like, talk to my family whatever,
whenever I have a break from work.
So, that's just one of the super lovely parts
about living and working in Rome.
So, apartment hunting here is actually really easy.
There's three websites you can find online.
One of the most popular being immobiliare.net,
and the other one, you can do Airbnb,
or you can search Rome room for rent on Facebook.
All right, so that's the end of my takeover today.
I hope you enjoyed it
and I hope you got something out of it.
And I really hope I was able to inspire some people
to make that leap to move abroad.
If you have any more questions about teaching here,
LGBTQ+ life here, or my past experiences with the LGBTQ+,
then please go to my personal page and message me there.
And to quote one of my favorite gays, be kind.
Ciao.
(techno music)