Life in Italy so far...

sday, June 12, 2007

Life in Italy so far...
Current mood: drained
Category: Travel and Places

Well, so far so good. They say that this is the hardest base to PCS into, and well this is my first PCS (permanent change of station) and so far it has been pretty rough. We have been super busy doing all the things we need to get done. Currently we are going to Right Start, it is Mandatory for Sergio and optional for me but I go so I know whats going on. Tomorrow is our European drivers test and on Friday we go on a tour on a bus and stop in the market, shop around, go out to dinner all you can eat and drink, wine tasting and learning how to use the train station and then to the mall. So it should be a lot of fun.

The big thing so far is finding a house. I don't think I explained the process before so I will try now... its complicated so bear with me...

Gov't housing is a two and a half month waiting list but since Sergio was in Korea for a year and away from his family (wife/kids if he had any) they try to get him into a family house asap. So they bumped us up on the list a year except for the top 10% which is like officers and generals and all that. So we got put at number 6 and offered a house right away.

We have 24 hours to decide and heres the catch. Once they offer you a house if you decline it then they will cut off your TLA (the money we get for our hotel) on the day that they would have been able to move us into that first house. Which in our case is June 25th. Well the first house was really nice but surrounded by vineyards and corn fields and although that isn't a bad view... its a bad smell since they use manuer for all their fertilizing everywhere! Just wait until it gets HOT... EWWWW....

So we declined and now have until June 25th to find a house or we pay to stay in the hotel ourself... technically... but we would stay with one of his friends until we found one. Well in the meantime....

I looked on aviano classifieds online and found a house that sounded great. It was too. Huge three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a big kitchen (hard to find in italy) no cupboards though and no dishwasher. a nice size livingroom and dining room and a fully finished basement! Which is super nice and would make an awesome theatre room. The neighbors are Italian and don't speak much English but the yard is fully fenced and has huge privacy bushes and a covered carport.
Then we were offered a second house from the gov't....

To our suprise it was a three bedroom (they usually offer two bedrooms to ppl w/o kids) one downstairs and two upstairs, a nice size kitchen with cupboards and a dishwasher, a carport, two bathrooms, a storage room, an attic, another small storage room upstairs, more like a storage cupboard and a dining room, American neighbors and a nice community, fenced back yard and a patio in front that can be fenced in. We don't have to pay anything at this one. Where with the other one we have to pay the landlord but the government gives us the money we just have to watch our utilities and not use the washer dryer shower and turn on a lightswitch at the same time or we blow a fuse and if something breaks we have a landlord who doesn't understand us...
So we have a tough decison to make.

We are still looking out for a car, a second car. Our household goods will come around July 27th and our car on July 22.

The food is great, the sights are great but of course there is no place like home. I am sure in 20 years or less we will look back and have lots of memories but for right now its rough.
We miss you all and keep checking back for more pictures... hope to see you all soon. We have two spare bedrooms!