Random Photos

While googling "motta", the town where Emily (+ etc) will be living, I came across

a random stranger's sicily pictures

which seem pretty interesting. E mentioned the volcano and the weekend festivals when she called the other day.
Also while googling, a random fiat panda photo:

75th percentile

the baby weighed in at 13.13 with no diaper and an empty stomach today, 25 inches long with a big head. They said he was right on target for all things measurable (no surprise there), and smiled at the docs just long enough for them to get the needles out (3 shots-hep b, dpat, and something else), and then proceeded to sleep the rest of the afternoon thanks to baby tylenol.

also today we found out that we may be responsible to pay for the 4 days that d was in a motel without me...totalling about $600 that we really shouldn't have had to pay. No good. Still working on it, so we'll see.

indoc is going well, we're learning a few basic italian words/phrases along with pronuciation. Tomorrow is a guided tour of the local city of Catania along with a nice dinner at a 5 star restaurant (4 courses, 15 euro...not bad!). I can definitely see myself spending loads of money while we're here, as long as unforseen expenses don't keep popping up (grr).

Will keep you posted as we have extra minutes...right now there is a LOT of running around trying to get all our ducks in a row. At least the car is fun (type in fiat panda if you're interested...picture a golf cart with doors)

ciao

yeah, I think I'm gonna love it here.

The trip in a nutshell:
Left at 4:10 for the airport, departed on time at 6:30. Arrived in NYC on time bought coffee but couldn't even taste it because my next plane was leaving earlier than I realized, so I announced to the terminal that it was fresh, hot, drug-free and smelled great (still no takers) before placing the cup next to the trash and heading to Norfolk, where I switched my bags from one arline to the next, visited with Dr. Sam and proceeded to sit in the terminal for the next 4 hours waiting for air traffic control to quit deliberately slowing traffic down in some kind of protest so that I could fly to Newark (yes, I realize that is basically one big circle. ah, the irony). Luckily I talked to the ticket agents and once we realized that I was going to miss my connection from Newark to Milan we were able to change my ticket so that I flew from Newark to London instead. London's Gatwick airport is HUGE, but I loved flying from there to Sig because the service was great. The master chief that I talked to on the last 2 planes over warned me that Catania's airport has a habit of losing bags, and he was right; my two suitcases were nowhere to be found and are now scheduled to arrive today at 4. It was a really good thing I met that master chief though, he was quite helpful; he even got the number for security's dispatch in Sig and let me use his cellphone so I could try to get a message to dan so he wouldn't have to sit in the airport wondering why I wasn't arriving when he thought I should be.

We're still getting situated; the TLA is great...there are 2 bedrooms, a bathroom with a little squat-and-get-your-nether-regions-sprayed-off toilet right next to the regular toilet, two balconies overlooking a well-organized garden...we heard 2 different roosters this morning and a childrens party (complete with the chicken dance song in italian) last night, and were able to sleep in until 11 this morning (5 am your time, not exactly sleeping in).

I'd say more but now we're off to see a local market store with some of d's new buddies. Suffice to say it's beautiful, dry and hot here, and I cannot wait to fill y'all in on the rest of my initial assessment.

oh yeah, and the baby is a world-class traveller. He may be the only one who didn't complain almost at all for the entire 24 hours that we were en route.

ciao.

ATTN: Dan

Dan,
E called from Norfolk. Her flight has been delayed. She is continuing to work on it and THINKS that she will be getting to Sicily at 2:30pm your time on Friday. She has also found someone that she thinks will help her get ahold of you.
I was at the doc office when she called and when I called back she was sitting on the Norfolk to Newark plane(I think, unless the destination changed - it was a very brief conversation). She was able to see Brenda in Norfolk, and the baby is doing great. We'll probably have TUNA with fried rice tonight to celebrate.
I'll likely talk to her again when she lands in Newark in an hour or so. Unfortunately, I will probably be on the road again to get Nick's finger x-rayed. You could call her if you get this.(yes, I know that it is bedtime there)
Anyway, I'll update as soon as I know something and am at home.
love,
other mother.

numbers

1.5 hours to drive from my mother's house to the airport, which means we need to leave by 4 a.m. thursday morning at the latest.
5 (count them: 1,2,3,4,5) different planes to make between thursday at 6:30 a.m.--when the first one leaves--to 11:40 p.m., which is which is when the last plane arrives (5:40 a.m. friday morning US time)
24 total hours of travel, 14:40 of which I'll be in the air.
$20 for 300 international minutes if we use the phone cards from the NEX. I feel certain that we can do better than that with a little patient searching on the internet.

D says that I'm going to love it in Sicily, to which I respond, "no duh." He's well set-up at the temporary housing and says we'll be able to move into our permanant housing this coming Tuesday, and our belongings will be there not too long after (one of the benefits of postponing our arrival so many days). He's doing his "indoc" training right now and actually finds it kind of interesting. He'll have the weekend off, along with the use of a fiat from the temp housing people (can you imagine?) so we can explore a little of the island where we'll be spending the next 3 years. I am definitely looking forward to it all =)

Prayer is much appreciated.

long story short

well, actually, there is no short end of this particular story.
grr.
I'm not going to update you on ALL of the hassles we've had trying to get to Sicily, but here's a brief synopsis of our weekend:

D, the kid, and I went to Horseheads Saturday to pick up our passports which were supposed to be on a Saturday hold. No such luck, and the transportation office in Gulfport didn't answer their pager (of course), so Sunday at 3:30 am we left for Rochester to drop him off. Delta was great; they let our overweight suitcase through with no debate, and gave me a security clearance so I could watch the plane take off in person since I wasn't on it like originally planned. Yay Delta.
The cat is at my parents' house. He set up camp on the steps and is attacking everyone who dares attempt the trip up or downstairs. I told the chinese kid who's living with us to ask his mom for recipes ;-p
D emailed me last night from the city Dr. Sam lives in and said everything was going well; he was about to board the plane for Sicily and wasn't too bored yet.
I called the transportation office this morning, and the guy (who may or may not be responsible for most of this hassle) said the passports were delivered back to Gulfport this morning. I would be interested to know if they ever left, but that's my cynical side showing. SOOOO...he's going to send them to us again, they should be here Tues. or Wed, and he's going to book tickets for Thursday. Hopefully by then D will be a little bit settled into our temporary housing and oriented with the base enough to not be completely clueless when I start asking questions (hehe).

just to show you that life isn't all that terrible, here's the new thing the kid learned last night, along with the clothes I got from my neighbor and the suitcase from my aunt (thanks aa) to put them in:

why again are we leaving?

the view from here

this blog is looking rather lonely, so I thought I'd give you a photoblog of what we did this weekend.

Yesterday (Saturday), the outlaws walked D, the kid and I around their land and we discussed where we may or may not build in a few years.














This is what the view from our potential front porch would be:














Then we came home and had a pleasant evening with the inlaws and hannah and tim.














Today(sunday), the outlaws came to wellsville to celebrate the kid's dedication to the church,














and to eat the inlaws out of house and home.

I wish I knew the # to call for audioblogger

'cus this kid figured out how to talk. Well, not exactly talk, per se, but definitely how to make noises of every shape and volume, all in the name of a good converstion with the dog, blanket, or accomodating parent/relative. Very cute. I think there might even have been a giggle or two.

In other news, our trip is going quite well, although it is coming to an end quicker than anyone wants. Waaz is flying out sometime this weekend and I'll be following about a week behind. Not exactly ideal, but it will work. Our list of "people to see" is running down, and our list of "things to do" is mostly checked off. One thing that wasn't on any list anywhere was contracting colds, but we are accomplishing that task as well (he's almost over his, I'm just starting mine, so far the kid has not even sniffled).

Hopefully we will be dumping pictures today, so I can post a few new ones before we leave.

~mrs. waaz