My First "Official" Blog!

Alright, here it is...My blog! I hope to post things regularly and inform people what is going on in our lives. It will make it easier since we are so far away.

Here's an update of things we have done since we have been here:

We moved into our apartment in Sarone, it's a perfect size for Dan and I and most importantly, I knew I would feel comfortable in it while Dan is not here. For me, that's a biggie! Move in day it rained all day, it wasn't the best, but it was fairly easy going. I got the apartment put together in about 4 days, we still have some things lying around that I would like to find better places for, but we will get to that eventually. We've had some issues with a "breaker" that is in this apartment. Each home in Italy is allowed 3000watts of power, unless you purchase more. It's not that we are using too much power, because we are not, our whole apartment is on a GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter). This is what a hair dryer has on it for safety reasons...say you drop it in water, that should turn it off. I'm not sure why our whole apartment is on this, but it's a huge pain in the butt. The first night we couldn't even plug in our transformer to watch TV. It was popping the breaker,instead that GFCI dial. We finally found an outlet that doesn't trip it as much and you have to plug it in a certain way. It still trips quite often, but not as much. When we use our oven, it also trips this. About every 3 minutes we have to go and reset it. I need to call the landlord on this...I just wish he spoke better English or I spoke better Italian. I've been putting it off for this reason.




Since we've been here we have visited some areas. We went on a welcome tour the first week we got here, went to a local market and some towns. We were also taken to the train station to learn to purchase a ticket, we got on the train and rode to the next town. We also visited Venice, we took the train from Sacile to Venice which took a little over an hour because of the stops. When we got into Venice we took the water bus to the main square and saw St. Mark's Basilica and Doge's Palace. We went inside the Basilica, it was amazingly beautiful...they would not allow us to take pictures inside, so you will just have to come visit to see for yourself :) We also visited an art gallery and ate lunch in one of the town squares. A few weekends ago we went and checked out IKEA and bought some things. We also visited the towns of Palmanova, which is a city that is enclosed by walls...it was pretty neat. We also went to Aqeileia- it used to be an ancient roman city, not owned by Italy. When you first enter the town there are ruins on the left side of the road...then we went to this museum and it had tons of ruins there. We also climbed to the top of the bell tower...that was a lot of tall stairs...But it was pretty at the top!

Venice




Entering the City of Palmanova


Dan climbing the stairs up to the top of the bell tower


A view from the top


Me at the top with the bells


We also went into a church...here are mosaics on the floor..it was beautiful


Last weekend we went to an amusement park here called Gardaland. It was alright, not something we would go back to. We stayed about 3 hours, saw the whole park, rode some rides and decided to leave. On the way back we went to the older city of Verona. Here we saw Juliet's house, the famous balcony, the basilica and the arena. Sometime this summer we want to go back and spend some more time here. It is a very neat town and soon they will start up operas in the Arena, we definitely want to see that.

During the weekdays I usually clean, vacuum and keep the apartment nice and tidy. I met a very nice girl that lives here in Sarone as well, her name is Monica. It's worked out really well, her and her husband Mark have a 1 year old little girl, Abbie. I've been trying to help Monica unpack some and watch Abbie since her husband is TDY. We go to the base together to get mail and grocery shop and eat lunch and we've also been to the mall here too. I hope to travel around the area and do more with them, we have fun. It's fun to watch Abbie learning new things and repeating what you do or say. She's a little sponge, she soaks everything up so fast!

Yesterday we went to the market in Pordenone and bought some Cherries. I was looking for cheese, but was unsure of what kind to get and they didn't have any samples out. I bought cheese at a market before, it was very good. I don't think this cheese vendor was at the market yesterday though. We then went into Aviano and went to a nursery. We bought flowers and oregano, rosemary, basil and 3 different kinds of tomato plants. We also got a melon plant, although we have no idea what kind of melon it is...it was only 1 euro.

Flowers I bought at the commissary on base


Flowers we bought from the nursery and planted




Tomato Plants


Basil, Oregano and Rosemary


Last night Dan made homemade PIZZA...it was delicious! We got fresh Mozzarella and San Daniele prosciutto. San Daniele is a small town about 45 minutes from here, this is another town Dan and I visited when we first got here. He went to a restaurant and we got a plate of San Daniele prosciutto and Mozzarella and bread. It was pretty darn good. We also got gelato there, it's the best I have had so far. It was peanut butter with chunks of peanuts and chocolate. :)

Prosciutto with Mozzarella on Bread :)


We are still waiting on a high speed internet to be available. There is one through pop wifi that is available now to us, but it's very expensive to get it started and we can only get a speed of 1mb with it. The internet that should be available soon will cost nothing for installation but will be a little more expensive monthly. We will get a speed of 6mg with that though, so much faster. I just hope it's available soon!

That's it for now, I will keep you updated!

Well, I think I will leave it at that for my first entry...that should get everyone caught up on what's been going on here.