Our house in Sarone

So we took a bunch of our big stuff from our TLF room over to the house today.  Our TLF looks much less cluttered now.  Unfortunately I can’t say the same thing for the house.  But I took pictures before we messed it all up with our unorganized junk.  (It is hard to organize though when you have nothing to organize with…)

Here’s the load in the back of the truck we borrowed.

This is going to be our guest room/ hang out room.  That little area in the back with the light on is where the guest bed will go.  We’re going to figure out how to make that opening smaller so it’s more private.

 

This is the other side of the guest/hang out room.  That’s a fireplace in the corner.  The stairs you see outside the door lead up to the main floor.

Stairs leading to the main floor.  That door on the right is the door to the garage.  The door on the left is a storage room, along with the door you can barely see, straight back.  Also, the wall behind the door on the right is the downstairs guest bathroom.

Same stairs, different angle.

Here’s the downstairs guest bathroom (half of it).  Our washer and dryer will also go in here.

I’m standing in the living room taking this picture.  That’s the front door on the left, and the kitchen straight ahead.  (Told you they have VERY small kitchens in Italy.  How I’m going to fit all my kitchen stuff in that space is beyond me…)

Here’s the outside of the house.  That’s the rock wall I was talking about before, that they’re going to put a fence along.

Here’s the yard behind the house, that you can see out the bathroom and master bedroom windows.

The side yard, and the landlords house off in the distance.

Here’s a better picture of the kitchen.

And here’s the living room, as viewed from the kitchen.

These are the views from our kitchen window.

This is the view from the front door.  Straight back is the bathroom, and down the hallway to the left is our room, and to the right is Abbie’s room.

Here’s Abbie’s room.

Here’s the bathroom.  (Yes, it has a bidet.)

And here’s our master bedroom.  (The upstairs room is probably the master bedroom, because it has an attached bathroom, but there is no way in hell I’m having Abbie downstairs on the main level and us up on another level.  Not with the chance of random people breaking in to our house at night.)

Here’s the view from the upstairs bedroom window.  This is probably at least 60% of the reason we love the house.

This is the upstairs bedroom that we’ll be using as a computer/play/sewing/extra guest bedroom.

Here’s the attached bathroom on the upstairs bedroom.  (And it has a bidet also.)

The ceiling of the upstairs room.  We love it.

 

So there’s the grand tour.  We are excited about moving into this house, despite the fact that there’s not a single closet in it.  I really have no clue where I’m going to stash all my junk.  We went around today and installed little alarms on all of the ground floor windows.  I’m half tempted to spring for a security system to be put on it.  Kelly, from the previous post, said they paid like 2500Euro (which is a lot more in $$ right now) to have a security system installed on their house.  At this point, I think the piece of mind might be worth it, even though we don’t have $4000 laying around to spend on it, especially since we can’t take it with us when we leave if we did install it.  If any of you have any cheap home security tips, I’m all ears!  Let me know what you think of our house!

Who’s coming to stay with me?

We borrowed an F-150 from friends in the squadron today so we could move our stuff from the TLF’s into our house.  When we dropped the truck off at their house, I got to talking to Kelly (owner of the truck).  She was telling me about the time they got robbed.  And how one of their neighbors recently got robbed.  And how a different neighbor got robbed 3 times in ONE month.  And how a friend of hers woke up in the middle of the night because her German Sheppard was growling and found a man at the foot of her bed….

So Kelly woke up one morning and found a rug from their porch all rolled up in the middle of the hallway outside their bedroom door.  She thought it was strange, but thought it was her kids.  (She has 3 boys.)  She walked a little further and found PVC piping from the yard in their house also.  After wandering around find odd things all over the place (apples from their kitchen table in the front yard, passport, wallets, visas on a bench on their front porch) they realized they’d been robbed while they all were sleeping.  The scary thing was, the wallets that they found on the front porch had been on the night stand right next to her husband, who was asleep.  They think they were gassed because they all woke up with horrible headaches, and they (not even the dog) didn’t wake up while people were roaming their house.  They found where the robbers drilled 2 holes in their window to break the lock and open it.

So this is the 3rd personal account I’ve heard of people getting robbed here.  Apparently the gypsies are only after gold and Euros.  They’ll leave all electronics, credit cards, and usually leave dollars, but they take Euros.  The thing about Italian law is that they won’t prosecute people for stealing from someone.  Even if you catch them in the act and call the police, the police here won’t do anything about it.  When Kelly got robbed and called the police, they didn’t even write anything down that she said.  And it is illegal for you to do anything to the robbers, even if you find them in your bedroom in the middle of the night.  You cannot physically harm them at all because Italians value people more than property and you will get in serious trouble for even scratching an intruder.  If we, as Americans, were to harm someone, even in defense of our property, the Air Force would deport us immediately, to protect us from the Italian government, which could lock you up for a long time if they caught you.  If an intruder comes on to your property and your dog bites them, that’s not good at all.  Even if you have “beware of dog” signs up, the robber can get your dog in trouble if it bites them, even if they’re on your property uninvited.   Talk about messed up, and scary!

Kelly was also telling me about a friend of hers who had a yellow lab.  Her friend got a call from the Italian police telling her to come to the station with 1200Euro to get her dog.  Apparently someone had hit her dog with their car, and it did damage to the persons car, so her friend had to bring money to pay for the damage to the persons car to get her dog back.  That’s also why they don’t have garage sales here.  I guess one of her friends tried to have a garage sale and the people that came to the sale just walked in to her house and started helping themselves to things in her house that weren’t for sale.  She was plucking things out of people’s arms as she was yelling at them to get out of her house.  The people here know that you can’t do anything to them when they take your things, without you getting into serious trouble, so they help themselves.  The gypsies also come to your house when they know you’ll be home, because they know your wallet full of money will be there when you are.

Needless to say, it’s scary to hear about all of this.  It wouldn’t be nearly as bad if I knew Mark was going to be home every night, but the reality is that he’ll be gone the majority of the time, and I’ll be there by myself with Abbie and the weinas.  So, who wants to come stay with me for 4 months early next year?  Or 4 different people can come for a month each.  Or 16 different people can come for a week each?  Please?  Anything so I don’t have to be alone.  With the gypsies.

More house drama

So the military give us an allowance for our housing here.  Our cap is 1280Euro, meaning they’ll give us up to that amount to use for a house, unless they decide the house isn’t worth that much, and then they’ll give us whatever they decide the house is worth.

We’ve been trying to get our housing contract back from the inspection guy for the past week.  Yesterday Mark got a hold of the inspection office on the 3rd try and they said the guy had inspected the house and was waiting for a call back from our landlords…  So Mark called the landlord and Cinzia said that she wanted us to come out to the house so she could talk to us.  …. Uh oh.

So since Mark was busy, as he usually is these days, Abbie and I drove out to the house to meet with Cinzia and Loras.  Cinzia is Loras’ daughter and I think Loras actually owns the house, but he doesn’t speak any English and I think Cinzia and her husband Luca get the money from the rent we pay.  Anyway, so I met those to at the house to figure out what’s going on with all of this.

Turns out, the housing inspections guy has put the fear of God into them.  He came out and deemed that the house was only worth 1050Euro, and told them that if they don’t agree to rent it to us for that amount that the military will not give us ANY money at all the rent the house and they’ll make us find another house to rent.  (They were asking 1150Euro + 80Euro for water and trash per month.)  They also told them that now they can’t just charge a flat rate for water and trash, that they have to get receipts for these things from the city and give us the receipts and then we pay them from the receipts.

I felt bad for them and it was a really awkward situation.  They’ve been renting that house for 1150Euro for 8 years and then this guy, who was very rude to them, comes in and tells them is going to be his way or the highway and they just need to deal with it or they won’t let them rent to Americans anymore.  (Side note: the Italians make VERY good money off of the Americans around here.  They charge other people less than half of the amount of rent they charge the Americans typically, because they know what the Americans get in allowances.  So the military put this system into place because the Italians just kept raising their rents to the caps of the allowances, even though they weren’t worth it.  They also made them all put air conditioners in any unit they rent to Americans.  So they’re making good money off of the Americans, and they know it, so they don’t want to lose the contract with the base.)  But anyway, our landlords seem to be very fair and honest people and aren’t trying to screw anyone over, but they were scared and upset after the inspections guy left.  I tried to reassure them that one we got the contract out of the way, that we’d work directly with them and not go through the housing office for everything, but I don’t speak any Italian yet and Cinzia’s English is limited.  I think I got my point across though.

So Mark is supposed to get another contract from housing today and I’m supposed to go out there and meet with them again today after 6pm.  Which is going to be a trick since Mark has to work from 4pm-midnight and we have one car.  So that means I get to take him to work and then wake Abbie up and pick him up at midnight…  Did I mention how much having only one car sucks?  Our unaccompanied baggage is supposed to be at the house tomorrow so we’re supposed to be there from 8am – 8pm…  Don’t think that’s going to happen really, but a couple in Mark’s squadron is letting us borrow their F-150 so we can make 1-2 trips from the TLF’s to the house in the truck vs 10-15 trips in our tiny Lancia.  (That thing is smaller than an Escort, by a lot.)

Anyway, I’m very ready for this housing mess to be behind us.  It’s turned into a much bigger ordeal than it needs to be and has everyone on edge.  Hopefully it’ll all work out.

Abbie Rose is 11 months old!

Yesterday was Abbie’s 11 month birthday.  It’s hard to believe in a month she’ll be a year old..

It’s not the prettiest picture of her, but I finally got a picture of her teeth!  She’s also getting the teeth on either side of her top front teeth, so she now has 6 teeth total.

This is how we find her every morning, standing up in her crib, hanging on to her pony.  (Rachie, did you get her that?)  She loves that pony and is always dragging it around by the leg, and she snuggles with it sometimes at night.

 

She can now reach down and pick things up off the floor while she’s standing, as long as she’s holding on to sometime.  And she’s still spitting food out ALL the time.  I don’t know how to stop her from spitting food out.  Pretty much the ONLY food she won’t spit out is cheese and whole wheat bagels and broccoli.  But any other fruit of veggie, she’ll put in her mouth, and chew, but then spit it all out.  It’s super annoying.  And anything pureed, she pretty much spits out right away.  You put it in, and she immediately spits it out.  Sometimes after the 3rd or 4th try she’ll actually swallow it..

Her sleeping is still an issue…  Sometimes she does great, and sleeps from 9pm to 8:30am.  Other times it takes us 2 hrs to get her down, and she wakes up 3 times during the night and screams and then is up at 7am.  I really don’t understand her sleeping habits at all.  And her naps are still a huge fight.  I just gave her a bottle and she was pretty much asleep on me, but as soon as I put her in her crib, she’s up and screaming, and she’s currently in there screaming.  Either I let her scream and she’ll eventually fall asleep, or I go in there and then she won’t go to sleep at all and she’ll miss this nap for the day and then the rest of the day is hell.  I was hoping that one day she’ll just lay down and go to sleep when she’s tired, but she hasn’t yet, and I’m not holding my breath for the future. So she was better from being sick, but now her nose is running all over the place again and she’s sneezing like crazy.  I’m wondering if she has allergies, but I don’t really know.  She doesn’t have a fever, just sneezing and running nose.

So it’s incredibly hard to get a picture of her with my little cards, so this is the best we could do this month.  She just has an agenda of her own these days, which doesn’t include a monthly photo shoot.  We take what we can get, and this is what we got.

Bedtime for bonzo!  (It’s no big secret when she’s tired, the secret is how in the heck to get her to sleep!)

Venezia!

We ventured down to Venice (Venezia in Italiano) today for the first time.  It was my and Abbie’s first time in Venice, and Mark’s 2nd.  It’s a beautiful city and fascinating to see.  We had a really good time walking all over the place.  We drove to the Sacile train station, which will be less than 10 mins from our house, and figured out how to buy our tickets from the guy in Italian.  It’s a lot of pointing and hand gestures with a mixture of English and Italian, but we got our point across and got 2 round trip tickets.  We were waiting on the platform for the train to get there when some lady came up and told us that if we were going to Venice that we were on the wrong platform.  How she knew we spoke English or that we were going to Venice is beyond me, but it’s a good thing she said something or we would have watched our train leave without us.

It was about an hour and 20 min train ride to Venice.  Abbie was getting tired so she was pretty pissy and Mark and I were really starting to wonder how much we were going to be able to travel while we live here with her.  She was quite the handful on the way there, but once we got to Venice, she was great!  Thank God!

 

We stopped for lunch shortly after we got there and shared a panini and a coke.  The one thing that I don’t like about Italy, in general, is that all the restaurants serve the same type of food, for the most part, ESPECIALLY in touristy areas.  It’s all paninis/wraps, pizzas and pastas and they’re all basically the same types/combinations of flavors.  The food is good, but I guess I like more variety.  Here’s our 3Euro can of Coke.  No joke!

So obviously Venice is full of canals.  They’re just beautiful.  There are guys trying to sell gondola rides EVERYWHERE, but in the Rick Steve’s book we borrowed from friends, it said they’re VERY expensive, so we didn’t even bother to ask prices.  We had more fun walking anyway.

 

There are these types of stores with produce and noodles out like these all over Italy.    We ran across a market that they were having.  They were cleaning most of it up as we got there, but there were still quite a few whole fish around, and they were cutting chucks off of really big ones.  I think these fish are REALLY fresh. Here’s the produce part of the market.  These never cease to amaze me.  They’re beautiful to look at and we got 2 bananas and an apple for 1Euro. I had to take a picture of the weina.  We saw 3-4 of them, including a wire-haired! This is the grand canal.  All the other little canals actually have street names, but this is the main one.

Of course we had to try out the gelato (for the first time since we’ve been here).  It was WONDERFUL! San Marco’s.

 

 

     There are these steps all over Venice.  This is how you get on and off all the boats/ gondolas.  A Venice ambulance!    

Venice was a lot of fun, and I’d love to go back and look at things a little more ‘in-depth’.  This time around it was kind of a quick run-thru where we got the feel of the place.  There are hundreds of shops to look in, and lots of people selling original artwork, so we’d love to go back and buy some of that.  I’m sure we’ll have lots of opportunities to explore Venice more when friends and family come to visit.  If you come to visit us, you really can’t pass up the opportunity to see Venice if you haven’t seen it before.  However, we’ve been told by quite a few people to not spend the night there, so I don’t think we’ll ever do that.  It’s kind of pointless anyway, since we live so close to it.  Why pay outrageous prices for a hotel there, when you can pay 8.80Euro to get home AND we won’t have to board the weinas somewhere.  But we’ll definitely go check it out.  (Mom and dad, I know you said we didn’t have to go while you’re here, but you’d love it, so we should go.)

Mark and I decided that Abbie just gets bored on planes, trains and in cars.  Once we’re out and about, she’s happy as a little clam.  She likes to be worn on our backs, better than our fronts, in the Ergo and she’ll just ride along back there and chatter and point.  She was great the entire time we were in Venice and most of the ride home too.  That Ergo was one of the best $100 we’ve ever spent.

Luckily I found a 2gb SD card for the camera at the BX for $9.95!  Score!  The pictures in this blog aren’t even a fourth of the amount that I took today.  I’ll try to post more on Facebook once we get the big computer hooked up.