Mamma Mia!

By law, after you arrived Italy you must apply for Permesso di Soggiorno (Resident Permit) within 8 days. The course secretariat will arrange photographer to take your photo and print it so you do not really need to bring passport size photo from home but their photographic skill is totally suck. Fortunately the permit will only valid until the course end (5 months) so I decided to give it a go. The application form is prepared by ITCILO, it is a huge thanks because I really don’t want to fill any Italian form by myself and avoid the hassle at the post office. The fee is included in tuition fee, just…

Apart from first week heating system brake down, ITCILO is somewhat nice campus. It’s located next to Po river and next a lot of green. I got the room at Africa 8 Annex and my class is just down stair, what a convenience. There are Intesa San Paulo bank (that need a reservation if you want to open an account), mini post office (that sold stamp and accept basic letter only), doctor room (scheduled, provide basic health consultation), laundry (full service), fitness center (moderately equipped), canteen, sport ground and etc. The guest relation section will keep your campus life filled with activities. They arrange a tour to major attraction such…

After a few weeks passed by, the official opening ceremony has come. Many honorable guests such as someone from ministry of foreign affair, Carabinieri, immigration police are invited, the campus suddenly become lively. After the speech from the director of ITCILO, there was a speech from previous student and present student. After a few speakers, we started to notice that no one from Africa or Asia (except one regular customer, a white Mongolian who enroll multiple time here at ITCILO). Speech delivered in Italian, Spanish, French and English. The African is probably the majority of the student here and yes there are a good number of French speaking African but…

Getting a SIM card in Italy is not so easy nor too hard. First, you will need the codice fiscale or Italian TAX code. You can request one from your Italian Embassy back home but if you failed to do so like me, the secretariat of the course will help you get one when in Torino. The codice fiscale is a unique code with character and number generated from your name, birthday and place of birth. If you are pretty sure that there is no one with the same first and last name, born at the same day and coming from the same country then you can use online generator…