Hot, Hot, HOT

This past week has been pretty warm. I believe it's only been in the 80's, but it's been SO muggy. It's hard when there is no central AC here. Our apartment has an AC unit upstairs where the bedrooms are, so that's nice. I'm not sure if it works, I turned it on just to see and it didn't seem like very cool air was coming out. Monica's wasn't very hot at her apartment and I guess it needed freon, she said it works great now. So, we will have to see. It's been cool enough at night we've been leaving our windows open upstairs. We also put in a ceiling fan and got rid of that ugly lamp shade that used to hang there, so that makes it better. Most Italians lock things up pretty good at night, even their windows on the second floor. I don't think they turn their AC on either, they must be baking in there. I'm glad our bedroom is on the second floor so we can leave it open and feel comfortable. The only thing that stinks is someone around us kicks their dog outside every night at 9pm and it barks ALL night. That gets annoying. I think I am actually starting to get used to it though. There is also an outside cat that hangs around that likes to meow and fight with things in the middle of the night, that gets all the dogs going in the neighborhood. Dan luckily can sleep right through it, not me though. Like I said, I think I am starting to get used to it.

This last week I didn't do too much. I cleaned as usual, Eddie's hair seems to be everywhere all the time. I feel bad for him, I think he's hot too!



This past week I have hung out with Monica every day. She got her kitchen hutch delivered, I helped watch Abbie and helped her unpack a little bit. We've gone on base a few times to pick some groceries up and do some other errands. Her husband Mark got home on Friday from a two and half week TDY.

On Friday night Dan and I went cosmic bowling on base with some people from his shop. It was fun. It was a small bowling alley and you have to reserve the lanes in advance, but it was nice. It was only $24 for Dan and I from 9pm-12am..not a bad deal. On Saturday Dan weed eated our small backyard and we went into Maniago to look for a good knife. We walked around the town a bit, got a cheese slicer thing and a tomato knife. They were both pretty cheap, together they were around $10 US dollars. On our way back home we stopped at Gorgazzo Spring, that was the spring we visited on the tour when we first got here. It's beautiful and peaceful back there. We were told there is a statue of Jesus down there and you can only see it on clear days. The water was the clearest it's been the 3 times we've been there, but we were still unable to see it. They have no idea where all the water in the spring comes from, I guess they have sent divers down there to try and figure it out with no luck, they have gone 131 meters and have yet reach the end. Monica told me yesterday that she heard 11 people died while diving down there and that's why the Jesus statue was put there. Maybe we will see it one day. We were going to go to one of our favorite pizza places, Vecchio's, last night to eat dinner, but they were closed. So instead we came back into town and drove up the mountain behind our apartment. There was a pizzeria up there that overlooked our town. We sat out on the back deck, it was beautiful. After dinner we went up the mountain a little more to see what was up there. After about 15 minutes of driving we were over the mountain heading down the other side, we decided to come home and go explore the next day because it was getting late. That leads us to today, we headed back up the mountain this morning, went through the forest, hiked some trails. Once we got out of the forest we were in this beautiful valley with some restaurants and homes, it was very peaceful out there.



We then started following signs towards Belluno, it took about a little bit to get there, but the drive was scenic.



Belluno is a town that's built up higher than most of the towns right by the mountains. We parked down below and they have about 4 escalators that take you up to the town. This is a view from where we parked.







Once we went up the escalators we walked around the town and took some pictures. It was a neat little place.









When we got home I attempted to skype with my mom, not so much luck. I called the internet guy last week and he said they just had a meeting and they are planning on activating it at the end of the month. I would then of course have to wait for them to come and install everything, so I have no idea how much longer it will be. There is another option called Pop WiFi, that's what Monica has. They came out to make sure we get signal and we do. They are pretty pricey to get everything hooked up and the equipment, which the other internet that I'm waiting on (NGI) is all free installation. Most people get a speed of 4MB with pop wifi, but when he came out here he told me we could only get 1MB, which would be slower and it wasn't a discounted price, it would be the same price as getting the 4MB. That's another reason why we are waiting on this other one, hopefully something doesn't fall through with it. I just wish I could have internet fast enough so I could talk on Skype. It gets frustrating after a while.

Dan made homemade pasta for dinner, it was really good. He has a 3 day weekend this next weekend and were talking about going to Salzburg, Austria (where The Sound of Music was filmed). I have to figure out what I have to do to get a pet passport for Shae and she can travel along with us. A lot of the hotels are pet friendly, most places overall are in Europe, so that's nice. We will let you know how that goes, I found a website kind of telling us what to do, but I am going to call the base vet tomorrow and ask them just to make sure. I hope we can get it this week so we can go, that would be nice.

It's storming pretty good now, the first storm we've gotten in a while. It's nice because it cools things down a bit!

That's about it folks. I will post later in the week!