Ok, we are fully aware that we suck at keeping the blog updated lately. Dustin said he was going to make a long Munich post but never got around to it so I think I’ll just post a link to the pictures and leave it at that! Without further ado:
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As promised…some pictures of Dan and BettyLou’s visit!
Cin Cin! Click for more...
Not done filling in the captions yet, but I’ll get to it.
This past Sunday was the first anniversary of our wedding. It’s been a somewhat tumultuous but extremely happy year for both of us and we were grateful and lucky to spend it with friends from home! (Thanks again for dinner!) Dan and BettyLou came to visit for 4 days during their tour of Europe which was made in celebration of their 25th anniversary. We had a great time and were definitely sad to see them go. I’ll post some pictures of our adventures a bit later when I get the chance. Dan got to see his old house in Motta! Anyway, gotta run. We miss everyone a whole lot and we’re starting to plan for our trip home in November/December.
un anno!
Our living room
Well, it’s been about 5 months since we left San Diego. We’re both pretty well adjusted to our life here. The house definitely feels like home and we’ve almost got the place decorated to our liking. A typical day for us would go something like:
- Wake up at 8
- Dustin gets ready for work, I get ready to go to the gym.
- Drop Dustin off at the command and head to NAS1 (approx. 4 miles) to go to the gym for an hour, shop at the commissary for dinner, then head home to shower and get dressed.
- Head to Nas2 around 11:30 to pick up Dustin and eat at the galley together. Sometimes we eat at home but the galley is usually top notch! If we have time we come home and hang out for a little while, our house is less than 5 minutes from Dustin’s office which makes things pretty convenient.
- Dustin goes back to work and I study and do schoolwork until he gets home. Certain days I go in to NMCRS, which is on Nas1, and volunteer.
- After Dustin gets home we make dinner. We’re getting pretty good at it too! Sometimes I’ll marinade something for Dustin to grill or we just pick recipes online to make. In fact, if you happen to know any good ones feel free to send them our way. We probably should eat out more considering where we are but we really enjoy cooking.
- Nights we usually play some video games (we picked up WoW again, *gasp*) or watch a movie together. I’m so happy he likes to watch movies with me, I’m a movie freak. Last night we watched [REC] which is a Spanish action/horror flick ….. actually very scary, we don’t scare easily. I would definitely recommend it (Francis?). The American remake is called Quarantine and the previews for it ruined the ending a bit, so don’t watch them! From what I read it’s also pretty bad. Why do they have to ruin every good movie to come from another country just because people don’t want to READ? It’s fine the way it is, thank you very much.
- We go to bed around…11:30-12 am.
So yeah, that’s about it. We don’t get out much on weeknights but I think we actually both prefer that now. Lately we’ve been staying in on the weekends to save up money for our next big trip which will probably be either Greece or Rome. This weekend is the big base Summer fair. I’ll try to remember to take some pictures, it should be fun. There is confirmation that there will be some Dunkelweiss (dark German beer!) at this event. Yes!
As some of you may already know, we decided to adopt a wayward kitten into our household. We named him Domani (“tomorrow” in Italian), which only seemed fitting considering our dog’s name is Oggi (“today”). They get along fine, although the kitten, now more of a ‘catten’ , likes to torment the dog. Oggi’s just so mellow he lets Domani attack his face and crawl all over him, except when his bone is involved, then the kitten gets a quick bark and scampers off.
All of the kitten energy can get a little tiring. He has 2 modes: docile purring loving awesomeness and insane Tasmanian Devil. There is no in between and we have the scars to prove it.
More pictures from our trip:
Hello everyone! We just got back from our trip to Amsterdam and Brussels. We stayed a total of 7 days, 4 in Amsterdam and 3 in Brussels. Both places are fantastic and highly recommended. I uploaded our first set of pictures which are all from Amsterdam. Beware, we took a lot of random ones. Some of them are blurry but we kept them anyway for sentimental value. The camera we bought before coming to Italy, which we were big fans of, broke before we left. We ended up borrowing a friend’s camera. This lead to some blurry pics and before long I had dropped the friend’s camera on the Amsterdam concrete which broke the LCD. We were still able to take pictures but the camera didn’t even have a manual viewfinder. We had no clue how to frame anything so it was a crap shoot. Anyway, enough excuses! Without further adieu…..
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Sorry it’s been so long since we’ve updated. Things haven’t really been TOO terribly exciting. Mostly we’ve been sick off and on for the past few weekends with various ailments. I suppose our bodies must be getting adjusted to the new environment. It’s probably a good thing since we’re trying to save some money for our trip to Amsterdam/Brussels in April.
In other news!
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Oggi is here! Thanks to much help from my mom and brother he’s safe and sound. He’s already claimed the backyard doing several rounds of squirting the perimeter. I can tell the trip took a bit out of him. He’s still a little confused and probably misses my brother who was his surrogate father for a few months.
I flew up to Rome the night before he arrived to pick him up at the cargo terminal there. It was quite the task. They sent me all over the place and all I can say is thankfully I know a little Italian. Finding the cargo area (which is miles away), getting to the Cargo company, Vet and Customs took about 5 hours total.
Nothing is easy here and I mean that in the nicest way possible. The extremely social nature of the culture makes signs less necessary. Why not just ask someone? If you’re helping someone and anyone you’ve ever met before comes in the door then by all means you stop what you’re doing and chat with them for 5 minutes while the person you’re helping waits. If your cellphone rings it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you pick it up and chat. Couple that with a major affinity for Bureaucracy (ala the movie Brazil) and that’s trying to get things done here in a nutshell.
After all the paperwork I had to get him to the terminal with me by shuttle bus in his gigantic doggy crate. It was quite the experience. A bunch of really nice people helped me along the way and for that I’m very grateful. Landing in Catania was scary because it’s been very windy lately.
It was a pretty stressful trip but I suppose I can be a little proud of myself for pulling it off.
We’re extremely happy that he’s finally here!
Ciao amici! I hope everyone is doing well in The States. Right now I’m in the middle of deployment practice week #1 because Dustin is away in the deep dark forests of Sicilia (hee) earning his Expeditionary Warfare merit badges. The week is almost halfway done but it’s been hard so far. I miss him terribly! It’s kind of hard to believe but we haven’t been apart for more than a few hours since he moved out of El Centro which I think was in October. SPOILED!
He will save us all.
I took that picture while he was getting all of his stuff ready for the trip. It’s cute how excited he gets about all the free warfare stuff. I can’t blame him, it’s fun to play with. He thought he was going to have to run with all of it on too but so far they’ve just been digging holes and eating bratwurst. (Thankfully, I get a phone call every night. Apparently there is cell phone reception in those deep dark forests)
I’ve been keeping myself busy with school and I started volunteering at the NMCRS (Navy-Marine Corp. Relief Society). If you haven’t heard of them (I’m sure you ex-Navy folk have) they are a non-profit organization that is run almost entirely by volunteers. They provide grants and interest-free loans for emergencies, education, and other situations. They need a bunch of help around the office and more caseworkers so they’re going to train me to do that as well. I’d be helping people get loans and budget plan. Accounting!? Uh oh…I’m turning into my mother.
Other than that we’re anxiously awaiting the Jeep which will be here any day now. I’ve been driving an ‘81 BMW one of Dustin’s coworkers lent us just to get from base to base. It’s pretty much falling apart at the seams so I wouldn’t dare drive it anywhere else. Once we get the Jeep we’ll be out and about all the time. I can’t wait! Considering we haven’t had transportation since we’ve been here we’ve certainly still gone quite a few places.
Let’s see what else….Ohhhhh:
It's Blood Orange Season!
Delicious Antioxidants
I made a really nice granita out of the juice. We also drink some almost every morning for breakfast. I absolutely love the freshness of everything here, It’s very contagious. Fresh fruits and veggies from the market, fresh meats and cheeses from the salumeria and macelleria, fresh bread from the panetteria. I’ve definitely been cooking more so hopefully I’ll be able to cook some good Sicilian meals the next time we meet!
Take care everyone!
Hello again! We just wanted to upload some photos of our recent outings. We went to the towns of Castelbuono and Cefalù last Saturday, both are NW of Catania, about two hours drive, sitting on Sicily’s north coast.
Castelbuono is a town built around a castle, which was constructed in the 14th century. The castle was owned by the Ventimiglia family, who were apparently rich and powerful. You needed to be rich and powerful to get your own castle I suppose, so good for them! I do not believe they were evil, so people wanted to build houses around their castle. It was built in a sort of Moorish style, just another example of the Sicilian “mixed” culture.
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Following this, we went to the town of Cefalù (pronounced CHEF-AH-LOO), a coastal town north of Castelbuono. It was supposedly founded by the Greeks and the first mention of it in historical data was 396 BC. Like the rest of Sicily, it has been conquered by various people over the course of history, to include the Byzantines and the Normans, the latter of which constructed a large Catholic cathedral in 1131. Aleister Crowley established a “magical commune” called the Abbey of Thelema here in 1920, but was kicked out of Sicily by Benito Mussolini’s government in 1923. Today it is very scenic and is a major tourist destination during Summer.
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Today, we hopped aboard a bus with our Indoc class and instructor/guide Andrea and took a tour of downtown Catania. Currently there is a festival in honor of St. Agatha, the patron Saint of Catania, it is the most important religious festival of the year in this province.
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Here is a little video I took of some of the events that occurred in the Piazza Duomo (city center).
http://picasaweb.google.com/primordia/CataniaFestaDiSantAgata#5298640721133425234
As you can see, it was very CROWDED. Personal space is a non-factor in Italy, you have a two inch bubble vice the American 36 inch bubble. It takes a lot of getting used to, I’m always checking to make sure no one has pickpocketed anything from me (we keep hearing warnings about Gypsies from Sicilians).
After this, our group had lunch at a five star (!) ristorante called “I Crociferi” translated to “The Crusades”. Photos included! We take many pictures of food.
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We’re both doing very well and are slowly furnishing the house. Today we purchased an actual bedroom set, so we won’t have to sleep on the crappy loaner bed for much longer! Indoc is over, so I’ll need to go back to work tomorrow. Amanda will be doing a few more things with the Indoc people this week. We’re looking at maybe taking a trip to some place in Germany in April (Berlin?) so planning that out will be a good time.
Oh and the Steelers won? Yech. I hope the various Super Bowl parties were fun, it was on at midnight here and we fell asleep!
That’s it for now, I hope everyone is doing well. Feel free to comment or email, I promise to reply!
