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December 23, 2002
BUON NATALE :) (translation: Happy Nativity)
I will be so happy to get my household stuff back!! Living out of a temporary apartment with someone else's things just sucks. Culture shock has finally set it. Yesterday was the worst - procrastination is a really bad thing to have in Sicily. I noticed as I was driving my rental car that it was on empty - gas station closed. I then realized that I needed to buy a few meals (really small freezer) for the next few days. Military grocery store closed. Okkkkaaaay. Laundry then. Water main near the only laundry mat on base broken and washers secured. Wahhhh. I am still on orientation which means eight or less hours during the work day but since they are on holiday break, I have been temporarily working at my real job. 12 hour shifts today and tomorrow so no way to bail myself out of the mess that I created. I am going to ask them to take pity on me and let me go early to get gas and food today. The Italian work schedule is very different from the American work schedule. They start at 8 am but then take a four hour break from noon to four pm and then work from four to about seven or eight. This means that the fast, fast, fast, gotta have it now mentality that I am so used to WILL NOT WORK here.
I am still without my own computer so updates will continue to be sporadic. We are adjusting and loving it though. This past Saturday, we visited a 16th century castle (Donnafugata) which was gorgeous. I took a whole roll of film so when I do get my computer back, there will be plenty of pictures. Seth is the Italian version of a movie star. They are so baby centered that where ever we go, strangers stop to coo and stroke his hair. While we were at the castle, he was mobbed by a school group mostly made up of Italian girls about 12 years old. At first he was laughing and flirting but then they crowded him and were talking noisily and he got freaked. Cheryl actually took a picture of us while I was trying diplomatically to extract him. They don't have the *th* combo in their language so his name is nearly impossible for them to say. They called him Sef or Seft.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! I hope everyone has at least a peaceful one. Oh, I keep forgetting to tell you the time difference. From the East Coast, it is six hours forward. Anyone who would like my address, let me know. When I move into base housing, Jan 17th, I will be getting a phone service that will allow people to call me through a dispatch that will only be about 6 cents a minute. If you would like to have this number, let me know that too.
Update: Got gas, got groceries and did enough laundry to make it through Christmas when I can do all of it at once.
Posted by DebC at 07:49 AM
December 13, 2002
trouble on the nanny front
Boy I tell ya, bringing someone overseas who isn't your dependent is a pain in the patoot!
Getting an Italian work visa for Cheryl proved to be nearly impossible so we elected to do the serial tourist visa option (okay, so not really an "option" per se). Every 90 days she will have to leave the country and re-enter to get a new visa stamp - good for her, a tad expensive for me.
The next problem is that, since she is going to turn 21 at the end of April, her military dependent ID will expire. The plan was to enroll her full time in college (self paced that is available here) so she can renew her ID until age 23 based on student status. Yesterday we learned that her mom must be here - on orders - to renew her ID which means that I now have to fly her back to the states for renewal. ARGHHHH! I am starting to get the idea that this wasn't meant to be! I am stubborn though (bet you had no idea) and am going to work on it a little longer.
Since I will be working 12 hour shifts (3 or 4 days a week), with a rotation of two months of days followed by two months of nights, a nanny is a must. I will have to look into another nanny situation. My kids might be fluent in Italian much sooner than we thought.
Posted by DebC at 03:15 AM
December 09, 2002
We're heeeerrrrre!
Well, that vacation was amazingly short. I am here in Italy (Sicily to be exact) and LOVING it. GREEN, GREEN rolling hills and cute, itty bitty towns with itty bitty cars. I am currently driving a Lanzia Dodo. Yep, they actually named a car that. It is like one of those circus clown cars - tiny on the outside but somehow huge enough to allow me to stand up (hunched over) in the back seat to buckle the boys in. The streets are really nice one way streets that they drive both ways on LOL. I felt like a sixteen year old the first time I got behind the wheel. Now, you can't tell me from an Italian driver. They pass on the left, even if you are stopped to turn LEFT AHHHHHHH!
The flight over took about 14 hours and was actually a civilian contracted flight so we got movies, hot towels and toys for the kids. But. Sleeping. As soon as the baby went to sleep, I would throw him in his carseat and close my eyes and then Jake would kick the guy next to him angrily in his sleep and so on and so forth. He was quite the belligerent sleeper. Eli, on the otherhand, slept like only a gumby doll could. I actually had to put Jake in the baby's car seat so he could finally get at least 3 hours of solid sleep which cracked the flight attendants up.
I had more help than I knew what to do with. One thing about being in the military is the sense of family and "can do" spirit in times of need. The community here is so small that a man walked up to me in the military airport in Virginia and said "Are you the new nurse that Mary is sponsoring?"!!! When we got to Sicily, my sponsor was there to help us get to the hotel which turned out to be a four bedroom apartment that she stocked with groceries for us.
Before we even landed, we could see Mt. Etna erupting. Words fail to describe how cool this looks. Being the science geeks that we all are, we oohed and ahhed on the van ride to the hotel. The Italian driver (who happens to be the manager of the hotel) asked us what we were looking at. He then said "we don't think it is so cool" Eeep. Open mouth, insert foot. I am on the island all of one hour and I have already made a social faus pas.
I have a ton of pictures to post from my vacation and also some of Sicily and Mt. Etna but I will have to wait until I get my computer so I can get the program that I make the photo galleries with.
I have fairly limited internet access but I will try to update several times a week. You all must simply start leaving COMMENTS. I know grandma is having a hard time because of Netscape so bear with me, I will be fixing that soon.
Posted by DebC at 12:29 AM | Comments (3)