Starting Over in Florence: Shelby Canon’s Story

Anna: Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Magic Towns Italy podcast! I'm Anna.

Gill: And I'm Gill! And today we've had the pleasure of interviewing Shelby Canon from Michigan. She spent many years of her life as a nurse, but was kind of feeling restless and unsatisfied with her life. She eventually ended up in Italy.

Anna: In this episode she talks about the visa, the apartment hunt, which was pretty rough, finding work and just what the first year actually looks like.

Gill: So shall we get on with listening to her story?

Anna: Yes.

Shelby: I am 34 years old. I moved to Florence in November of 2024. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan.

In my twenties I moved to Colorado and I lived there for eight years. I just always had this idea that I was gonna be a nurse. I was always obsessed with the idea of [00:01:00] traveling and I feel like I dragged my life around.

And I think this whole Italy thing started when I was 29. This was post COVID. I went to Southeast Asia Oh. For six months. I had this dream of like a big giant backpacking trip and to me, like taking six months off of work felt insane.

When you live in the US there's this idea that there's an upward trajectory of your career and you have to follow that, making more money, being rich.

And I took six months off, which actually turned into a year off of work. But that taught me that you don't have to follow the career path that was set for you in your early twenties.

I was back at home in Michigan. And I got a job at a hospital that I thought that I was gonna love and I hated it. I was miserable. I decided to quit that job and go to Italy for three months on a solo trip. That trip changed everything and there's a lot of reasons for that. Within the first month of that trip, I kind of decided that I was gonna move to Italy, and [00:02:00] me and my dog moved here in November of 2024.

Anna: I feel like this kind of solo trips like makes you realize a lot of things. Especially when you go to Southeastern Asia, because you see how different is life there, how different their priorities are, compared to ours.

Shelby: And in a like introspective standpoint, it shook me out of my comfort zone because I grew up very, lucky, very privileged, I guess. I came out of that trip as a completely different person.

Anna: And the trip to Italy kind of confirmed what you probably thought after that.

Shelby: Within the first two weeks of that solo trip in Italy, it was my 32nd birthday. And I feel like that date, there's like a before Shelby, and then there's an after Shelby.

Around that day, I met like soulmate level people in my life.

So that's what made me initially start to think like, this is where I'm supposed to be. But in [00:03:00] reality when I was in Italy, when I was in Florence, it was the first time in my life that I felt that I was like, okay, this is, this is it. Thank you. This is where I'm supposed to be.

Anna: And why out of all the places in Italy, Florence?

Shelby: One of my friends had been here before and she just told me, I think you would like Florence. I've always had an attraction to Italy. I don't have any family from Italy. I've always liked Italian themed, like movies, documentaries.

It felt like I came home, like I had been here before. I was super comfortable from the first day I was here.

And of course like actually moving here is a very different story, but that was just the experience that I had during that trip that made me make that decision.

Anna: I like to think that there was like a past connection, like, you know…

Shelby: Absolutely.

I was going through like grief and heartbreak, but I was also in this beautiful place and I was meeting people and I was learning Italian because I signed up for language classes on that trip just to like meet people, but then I actually ended up [00:04:00] learning the language very quickly and so that helped make my decision to move here.

Anna: And how was, like, your idea of Italy? You said that you felt a connection, but what has reality confirmed or completely shattered?

Shelby: Um, confirmed. There's a much slower pace of life here. Absolutely. I love that there's a big focus on like slowing down and making connections and like longer meal times and the work life balance. There's not this obsessive idea of climbing the career ladder here, which I know can also be a downside because that also means that a lot of things don't get done, you know?

Anna: Yeah.

Shelby: Like I can't deny that I still have a very American mindset when it comes to something bureaucratic and official. And I feel like a lot of my content is me struggling with, having to navigate this like: " well, I don't know. I'm not the person to ask". But that also can be a very [00:05:00] endearing thing about Italy is just like, it's gonna work out fine, it's gonna be fine.

I have to admit that there's been a transition of trying to leave my old American beliefs behind and trying to adjust and assimilate to this culture.

Anna: The culture of letting go.

Shelby: The culture of letting go, it's out of my control. It's gonna be fine. It's not that serious. Calm down.

Anna: So you said that you didn't speak any Italian before moving.

Shelby: When I came on my solo trip I did not speak any Italian. I knew like some very basic sentences from Duolingo. I think the first sentence that I learned was: " I ragazzi bevono l'acqua".

Anna: Oh my God. Which is basically the equivalent of "the pen is on the table" for us.

Shelby: Really?

Anna: Yeah.

Shelby: That's, it's just super, like, basic. And I took very, very little Duolingo. And then I came to Italy. I thought I knew how to order a coffee, but I did not know how to order a coffee.

I had to use my Google translate of course, to like navigate from the train station to my Airbnb and then when I took Italian [00:06:00] classes. It really made me learn very quickly and I was able to form like little tiny sentences to the shopkeeper and I was so proud of myself.

I was like, oh my God, I'm speaking another language. I would study and I did flashcards all the time. About eight weeks into taking Italian classes, I met my current boyfriend who I live with now. And he didn't speak any English at all.

I was just like on Tinder here in Italy.

And I met him. I knew that he didn't speak any English and I was like, what's the worst that can happen? Whatever. And so he picks me up on his Vespa and we go to Piazza Michelangelo for our first date. It was the first time that I really had conversation with someone who does not speak English. It wasn't like: "Hey, where's the bathroom? Can I order this pasta?" "What's this? It was actually like, so what do you like to do in your free time?" It was super crazy, but for some reason we're still [00:07:00] together, so..

Anna: So now you speak Italian together?

Shelby: I speak Italian all day, every day basically.

Anna: That's amazing. So you're lucky 'cause you're forced to, to learn

Shelby: Forced,

Anna: yeah,

Shelby: basically. I can't believe that he stuck it out with me because it was probably so frustrating talking to me because I didn't, you know, he is Moroccan, so he's also a foreigner to Italy, so he has helped me with, everything like the transition of moving here, like the emotional part of it, the language bureaucratic stuff. He understands that side of it. So it's been really helpful and I feel like him and I both have our own language together because he is a foreigner to Italy.

Anna: And talking about bureaucracy, which visa did you apply for? Was it complicated or…?

Shelby: So after my solo trip, I was home and I was looking up the fastest way to move to Italy as an American. And the thing that I kept seeing, which [00:08:00] aligned with my previous experience at my Italian language school, was to get a study visa.

I dropped a bunch of money, signed up for a whole year of language classes, applied for the study visa with all the paperwork.

That part was very smooth. My embassy in Detroit approved me very quickly, and then it was like, oh my God, I'm moving to Italy. Okay. And then I moved my dog here. That was a whole process. You have to take your dog to a vet. They have to make sure the vaccines are in order.

They have to sign all this paperwork. You have to have a crate and, you have to book a plane ticket. I did a lot of plane research. It was a long process. But then finally I came here, with that Visa and I still technically, my permesso di soggiorno is study still.

Anna: Okay.

Shelby: After a year and a half I'm still trying to figure out my long-term plan, and I guess I'll be [00:09:00] very clear. I don't have it figured out yet.

Anna: I didn't want to ask you about that because I know that it's a really, like, you can feel the anxiety of that question, so I didn't want to, to ask. I'm a huge fan of just figuring out things while you're doing them, so.

Shelby: I think it's going to work out. I still believe in my decision 100%. And that's what's keeping me going is my intuition is telling me that it's fine. We're still here.

I think anyone who's ever considering moving to Italy, I think the biggest piece of advice or the thing that I would say is that you have to be willing to accept whatever opportunities come to you. For example, I, I never in my life thought that I would be a preschool teacher, which I am now. If you would've told me that three years ago, I would've called you crazy. There's no way. But that's what opportunity came to me and I had to [00:10:00] take it, you know?

Anna: Absolutely.

Shelby: So it's having flexibility and just letting the universe like give you what is supposed to happen in the street, the path that's given to you, I guess.

And I spent a year, my first year here, I wasn't working. I couldn't find a job I really struggled with, because, you know, if you've seen, I don't know if you've seen like my Instagram, my themes of my videos, but the main thing that I struggled with was how delayed my permesso was.

Anna: Mm-hmm.

Shelby: This year of like not working in Italy and just staying at home and saving as much money as physically possible has taught me so much about the things that I'm actually interested in. Like I love reading. I love writing. I love making clothes apparently.

Anna: Yeah. And another common theme that I saw in your videos is finding an apartment in Florence that you said that was, oh, that wasn't that easy. How was the process?

Shelby: So yeah, it's still a struggle. When I first moved to [00:11:00] Italy in the beginning, I needed, for my visa application, I needed a place to stay. And so I reached out to the last Airbnb that I had stayed in, in Florence for a month. I reached out to that family and I asked if I could rent that apartment, which is this one.

If I could rent that apartment for my visa application, so for just for a couple months just to have something and then when I'm here, I would figure it out. Didn't know how difficult that actually was to do.

So I'm still here in that same apartment I am. I'm not paying Airbnb prices, but I'm still paying more than what's normal in this area. So that's a huge downside. My boyfriend and I started to get serious about looking for apartments in the summer or like the late summer, and we contacted probably over a hundred, 200 people online.

I contacted like hundreds of people on those apps and [00:12:00] very few people got back to me. I've spoken Italian to 'em, but I feel like they heard my accent and their first question was like, where are you from?

Anna: Mm.

Shelby: And they're like, oh, I'm American. And they're like, oh, where's your boyfriend from? And I said, oh, he's Moroccan. I had two people, I'm not kidding. Two landlords hang up on me. And I thought that like the phone just, just the phone just disconnected. So I tried to call back a couple times and no one answered. That happened to me twice.

Anna: My God. I'm sorry for these people.

Shelby: It was so difficult. It was, you know, why are you here in Italy? How long are you planning to stay? Well, when are you gonna move back to the us? Like, how much money do you have? What, well, what are you doing for work? What kind of contract do you have? Oh, I don't know if we can do that. I, so it's been, and my boyfriend works at a really great job here, and so I think just they think that I'm very transient and I'm trying to explain to them like, that's not the case. I'm here. I think having a lawyer at the beginning of all this would've helped me a lot.

But the information about residenza is not very [00:13:00] clear online about like the rules of what, why do you need residenza? Like, how can you get it?

Anna: Mm-hmm.

Shelby: But after that really intense search where we got ghosted by landlords all the time, we got turned down by so many apartments. we finally just said, we need to take a break. I can't do this anymore. So we took a few months off and right now we're slowly getting back into the apartment hunt.

Now that I have a little job, now that his job is more stable, I have like certified documents from my mother as a guarantor. So wish us luck!

Anna: Absolutely. Basically, finding an apartment is like, having to do lots of job interviews every time it's the same feeling.

Shelby: This last one that we toured asked me and my boyfriend how long we've been together, do we plan on getting married?

They get into the nitty gritty.

I just, it takes a lot of mental energy to just type out so many introduction messages.

And I do [00:14:00] believe that everything works out the way it's supposed to. So I think taking a slowing down and taking a break. That's how I got my job. I was getting turned down. I wasn't getting interviews, and then very suddenly after a long break, I just got a job as a preschool teacher. It's one of the massive lessons that I'm forced to be taught right now. Living in Italy is just like, slow down Shelby. It's gonna work out. I just wish that wasn't, that lesson wasn't so expensive.

Anna: And how is the cost of living in Florence?

Shelby: I think it's more than, if you were outside of Florence, you know? Yeah. I think grocery wise, on average together, me and my boyfriend, we spend like 50 to 70 euros per week. Public transportation, you know, I think it's the same across Italy. But I think apartment wise, I think on average you would, for a apartment of that, we want something that has one or two bedrooms in it would be 900 to 1400 a month.

I think [00:15:00] that's pretty standard. And I know Rome isn't much better.

Anna: No, definitely. Even finding an apartment was a nightmare. I spent hours, hours refreshing. You know, the page from my laptop for I don't know how many days and then I found like one, which is okay.

Shelby: You have to be flexible to just like take what you can get.

Anna: Absolutely.

Shelby: It's another thing that I've had to adjust because, now looking at my American self, I was so picky about the stupidest stuff, you know, like what my apartment had to look like, what kind of, what kind of material was on the cabinets and like what the kitchen looked like.

It's just, it's the massive lesson of like learning how to be flexible with our non flexible American brains.

Anna: And has your lifestyle changed a lot since moving?

Shelby: Yes. 'Cause I don't spend money on frivolous dumb [00:16:00] things that you're taught that you need, in the US there's over, over consumerism. I mean, if you go to any of the major supermarkets or super stores.

It'd be really interesting for an Italian to go into Costco, which is one of our huge super superstore in in the Us where you buy wholesale, so you buy an orange juice that's this big for less money.

It's, it's so different, but I'm, I like it more not doing that.

It's a very special occasion when we go out to eat at a restaurant now. It's very different and I think that has a lot to do with, my current status.

I'm only allowed to work 20 hours per week with a study permesso. Anyway, so. Now that I am working and I'm getting a little bit of money, I'm still trying to just spend as little money as possible, huge lifestyle difference than when I was in the us for sure.

Anna: So, if you could send a message back to [00:17:00] your past self right before the move, what would you say?

Shelby: Wow. I wanna just say like, there's a completely different life waiting for you. You just have to trust everything that's about to happen to you in the next three months. There's gonna be a lot of things that suck, but a lot of things that are amazing. Just trust it. And just your intuition is everything.

If I could talk to 2020 Shelby, and if I were to say, "Hey, by the way, in 2024, in 2025, you're gonna live in Italy, you're gonna speak Italian every day, and you're gonna have a boyfriend that you're in love with that doesn't speak English, and you're gonna be working as a preschool teacher, like I would've been like, how? In five years it's gonna be my life? What?"

Anna: Yeah. In five years you've completely changed it. That's crazy, and beautiful at the same time. Thank you so much, Shelby.

Gill: Wow, what a story. She was so brave. She left with, you know, her own [00:18:00] backpack and her dreams and she left everything behind.

Anna: Not many people would do that, I think.

Despite all the drawbacks, she decided that that was the right place for her.

Gill: And we wish her, you know, la dolce vita.

Anna: La dolce vita, yes. So, yeah. If you want to read the whole interview you can visit our website.

Gill: Have a nice weekend, everybody.

Anna: Have a nice weekend.