Wait a minute; we are living in an Italian villa. The flight over here was just as fun as I thought it would be with a cold. I thought my head was going to explode, and my ears were plugged for 3 days after we landed. But, other than that the flight was good. We got the bulk head so we had lots of legroom to put all our baby paraphernalia, but the arm rests didn’t lift up so I had to hold Sammi basically the whole flight. Luckily, it was her normal sleep time so she pretty much slept the entire flight with only a little crying at the beginning. But then after we got here it was hard to get her on a normal schedule. The first few days she stayed up until about 2 am because when I wanted her to go to bed she still thought was 4 in the afternoon or so. I kept taking her outside all day so she could see it was daytime, and now she is pretty much back to normal.
We were expecting a hard time getting Conan back. We had heard horror stories of people being sent all over the airport and having to pay $10 euros to all these guys, like bribes to get your pet back. Well, we just saw some guy carrying our carrier down the aisle by the baggage return area, and Jack said, “Hey, hey, scuzi, that is our cat.” And the guy just gave it to him! We didn’t have to pay anyone, we didn’t have to show any papers or anything. I think we caught the guy off-guard before they could make their little plan.
Our rental car was also big enough (barely) for all our luggage, the baby, and the cat. The drive from Rome down wasn’t that bad, either as it was all highway driving. We stayed in a hotel for a couple days but then went ahead and came out here to our house. We don’t have much with us right now, as we are still waiting for our household goods. Everyone’s HHG are down at the port. They have been there for over a week, but customs doesn’t want to release them yet. (They want more $$ I think.) Anyway, I just got the call and they are going to bring our stuff on Wednesday. Yay!! It will be nice to get settled. We are still trying to get used to the Italian schedule. Everything closes in the afternoon here from about 1 pm to 6 pm, and the restaurants open around 8 pm. Well, at the hotel and after we first got here I had no groceries and by the time Sammi and I would get up, showered and ready after naps and whatever, it would be about 1 and everything would be closed. It only took about 4 days of not eating all day until 9 pm to get some food here. I was pretty crabby on those days because I was hungry!! One day I made Jack take us to the Navy base so we could eat at Subway. It’s the only place that has stuff open during the afternoon! I think our sponsor just thought I was being hard to get along with. I didn’t even try to explain because they don’t have kids and you can’t explain how having a kid messes up the logistics of going anywhere. It just took me a few days to get into the swing of things. You have to get up early here, go out shopping for your bread and vegetables then take a nap in the afternoon during the heat of the day like a sensible person.
I really love the area where we are living. It is beautiful – lots of flowers and a good view of the Mediterranean. (You just have to ignore the random piles of garbage.) Our house is gorgeous, too. And it is wired for 11 kw of power, which is twice what most places have. So, we can run the ACs with abandon. It is practically a fortress, too. It is all steel, wood, and concrete, with bullet-proof glass for windows. No signals get in or out, so it is like living in a TEMPEST house. We can have TS meetings in here. Of course, that means that our cell phones won’t work in the house. Apparently one of the other providers will work in here, so we are waiting to use our credits then we will switch.
Of course, we are having our share of adventures. Driving, for one, is always an adventure. Mainly because the speed will vary from car to car from 30 to 180 – all in the same lane. You really have to pay attention or you will smash into the geezer driving 30 or get run over by the guy doing 180 – plus, there are scooters zipping in and out everywhere, and all the scooter drivers are smoking a cigarette and talking on their cell phones and weaving in and out of traffic. How more of them don’t die is a mystery to me.
Sunday we had a good adventure with the house. We were just getting ready to go out and let me do some test-driving on one of our routes when our power went out. We shut every single thing off in the house but every time we switched the breaker it would throw it off again. Then, when Jack tried to go outside so he could call our landlord the door wouldn’t open. No matter what, we couldn’t open it. So, we opened the window and screen and crawled outside to call him. Luckily for us, Dominique came over right away to help us out. Well, he couldn’t get in either, so he crawled in the window and somehow we got the power to stay on. Something is wrong with the AC units upstairs so we can’t run them yet. OMG, it is so hot up there now. The AC guy is supposed to come tomorrow to fix them and that will be great. We brought the crib and the mattresses downstairs last night so we could sleep. There wouldn’t have been any sleeping going on upstairs – it is like a sauna up there!
So, after we got the power back on it was time to try to fix the door. This is a vault door, and this is NOT an exaggeration. We have a genuine vault door for our front door. The tumblers for the 6 steel bars that lock into the floor, ceiling and sides of the house got out of whack and we were trapped. Thank goodness we were inside when it happened or we would have been SOL. We would have had to break a window to get in…and how does one go about breaking bullet-proof glass? After about 3 hours Jack and Dominique had it so it kind of worked, then they got the key guy to come over (on a Sunday) and he finished fixing it. Now it works great. When we got here it took two hands to lock and unlock it, and that was kind of annoying when you have a kid in your hands. Now it opens easily with one hand like a normal lock, except you have to turn it four times to get all those steel bars to open up. (Our landlord owns a pizza joint in Rome. We never realized that the “pizza business” was so profitable or so dangerous.)
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