Updates

We've been pretty busy on this side of the pond!  After about eleventeen trips, we finally moved all of our belongings from our friend Mike's apartment into ours.  See, we live inside of the ZTL (Zona Traffico Limitato) which is a restricted driving area, so we couldn't just load up the car and drive it up to our door.  Instead, we had to hand carry everything.  A bit of a pain in the rear, but at least it's done. 

We also made another trip to Ikea, ordered a couch, and bought some more furniture, which I spent the better part of yesterday putting together.  I have finally figured out a furniture arrangement that I'm happy wth, and I'm ready to get the rest of our stuff situated. 

Speaking of the rest of our stuff, after calling, calling, and calling some more, we finally got some news on our household goods shipment.  You know how it wasn't supposed to be here until the middle of October?  Can you believe it has been sitting in Italy for a while now?  It could have been delivered to us a week ago.  Yet people were still telling us that it was on a boat somewhere.  The organization and efficiency around here is impeccable......

We also bought a car this past week.  It's a silver 2002 VW Polo.  Couldn't get more European looking if we tried.  The actual purchasing process was quite comical.  We couldn't just go to the bank and withdraw the money we needed to buy it.  Because that would just be too easy.  Instead, the bank advised us to go to an ATM and withdraw the several thousand dollars we needed, which we had to do in $500 increments, and it came out in all $20's.  Just imagine how ridiculous we looked doing that transaction.  That's a lot of twenty dollar bills.  We looked like drug dealers.


The weather is turning cooler here and we're gearing up for fall and winter.  John Ralph leaves next week for some work in Germany, but he'll return just in time for Halloween festivities.  We're going to try to squeeze in some quality time over the next few days and possibly go hiking in a town near us.  I also have to learn how to drive a stick shift.  I'm not sure that would fall under "quality time", but it should at least provide us with some quality entertainment.