Is it difficult to keep kosher in Napoli? Yes, it is, frankly! It’s not impossible, but it’s hard. You will not find kosher meat or chicken here, or a big cheese selection like in Rome or Milan. Manage your expectations and you will mangia comfortably (SEE WHAT I DID THERE, YOU’RE WELCOME, I’M AROUND ALL WEEK).

Servicemembers and diplomats have a turn of phrase that they employ to describe the experience of living among the locals of a foreign country: living "on the economy." Living on the economy reminds you that being abroad for a long period of time is no vacation: you're living in a different country with different ways of doing things, and tasks that would be otherwise easy, or at least comprehensible, become much more difficult. This manifests in ways both big and small. Small: wanting a cupcake tin and realizing you don't know the names of any home goods stores, or even how to say "cupcake" in Italian. Big: buying a used car from an Italian dealer and having that car break down on the highway.

I’ve learned — sometimes the hard way — to accept and even appreciate the patterns of life here, but there are two words that when posted on a storefront can strike fear into the heart of even the most adaptive tourist or expat: “torno subito.” Torno subito means “I’ll be right back.” It’s a poetic description of a proximate future, a half rhyme giving you, fittingly, only half the information. Someone was there and will potentially return, but who? And when?

Italians are famously strike-prone. Shipping items are delayed? Port workers strike. Baggage doesn’t appear at the airport? Baggage handlers strike. Metro only comes twice an hour? Transit strike. The first time I experienced a strike it was a little baby strike. An amuse-bouche of a strike, if you will.

In my last post, I alluded to Naples being a place with Other Ways of Doing Everything. This is true on both a macro level — Italy in general runs differently to the United States — and on a micro level. Naples has its own rhythm and architecture to the day that make it different to the other major cities in Italy. As much as the city can feel like chaos, with time, certain patterns emerge, and they all boil down to one thing: Tradition.

Last week we finally checked off a major item from our long and intense moving to-do list: Receiving our air shipment! The saga of our air shipment began a few weeks before our move. Our aim was to leave for Naples as soon as was feasible once we had our visas in hand.

After obtaining food and shelter, learning to communicate in Italian has been my most important survival skill. English is not commonly spoken here. In Rome or Venice or Florence you can generally revert to English when you’re stuck, but in Naples, when you’ve run out of words in Italian, you’re really stuck.

Life in Naples has many pleasures: the architecture, the sea, the tomatoes, the castles, the ubiquity of the coffee shops. There are also many challenges. Many adjustments. Case in point: The streets of Naples are paved with poop.

Perhaps the greatest opportunities for faux pas here are at grocery stores. The language barrier and unfamiliarity with brands make me slow to select groceries, especially since I’m not certain what’s kosher, but more challenging has been the learning curve on grocery etiquette. Italian grocery stores are governed by a series of unwritten rules, that unlike road laws, are strongly enforced.