Ciao, everyone!
It’s Sunday and Mike has been gone since Wednesday. Today I’m kinda tired of my own company!! I just talked to Mom and Daddy though and it made me feel better (it always does).
Wednesday I took Mike to work in the morning, and he left from there for Denmark. They all flew out together, of course, from the base, on a C-130. (Don’t ask me, it’s just a big military plane I guess!) I’ve talked to him a couple of times, and he’s having an okay time, but he’s frustrated because apparently this trip was poorly planned and even more poorly executed. He has no patience for that at all. He says it’s really pretty up there though, and kind of desolate. They are near some cliffs or something overlooking the ocean. If I would look at a map, I might know which ocean! I got to wish him Happy Birthday yesterday, though, and we are going to celebrate when he gets back, so that’s good.
I haven’t done much since he left besides shop and watch videos! I’m quite proud of myself though; I rented the VCR on base and figured out all by myself how to hook it up. Okay, so it took two days and several (as it turned out, unnecessary) trips to the base for cords and adapters, but I DID figure it out on my own eventually!!!
I also have impressed myself with my driving and shopping. I drove all the way to Pordenone and went to a store called EmmeZeta, which is really the phonetic spelling of the letters MZ. This store, our teacher told us in our class last week, is the closest thing you will find to a WalMart here. I have to tell you, though, it’s more like an old Kmart in an area where there are no other stores to be had. It’s insanely crowded all the time (I’ve been there a couple of other times with Mike), the aisles are cluttered and narrow, and the organization leaves a great deal to be desired! Plus it has the classic sounds of those stores – people talking and hollering, babies crying, announcements on the PA system, etc. And of course, they’re all blabbering in Italian, which just adds to the cacophony, from my perspective anyway.
BUT, they do have lots of fun stuff!!! And I was so proud of myself, because after driving all the way there, alone (it’s like 25 minutes away), I shopped alone! I picked out bedroom lamps I wanted, but they were only on display and they didn’t have any on the shelves. I went to a man who spoke no English, and I told him in Italian that I wanted to buy the lamps, and showed him which ones. He tried to tell me that they were on the shelves downstairs, and I told him no, not this one. And he went and got them for me from the back!!! I was so high on myself at that point that I couldn’t stop grinning. I’m sure he wondered why I was so excited over lamps. (Don’t worry, I’m sure I will very soon have a humbling experience. They are quite common lately.)
Friday night I went to dinner at someone’s house. Her name is Terry (I hadn’t met her till I got there), and I went with Allison, who I knew from Florida. A girl named Beth, who I had met once at dinner the night after I got here, did the cooking. All four of our husbands are deployed right now, so it was completely girly and bonding. I loved it. We sat at the dinner table for about four hours, talking and laughing, and Beth and possibly Allison want to do some traveling/tours sometimes when the guys are out of town, so I’m excited about that. Terry is five months pregnant, so she says she won’t travel much before long.
Last night I made a stir fry and watched videos all by myself. I can’t wait till I have furniture and dishes so I can have people over! It keeps becoming more and more evident to me that we have the BEST house of anyone we’ve talked to so far! Beth said it’s mine and Mike’s duty to have parties since we got this great house. I do really love it to death, but I’ll love it more with our own stuff in it!
Tomorrow is the 20th, and that means I can (HOPEFULLY) get internet service. Mike was told at the store that the person who handles that would be back from vacation on the 20th. We have since tried to do it ourselves online, but we have not been able to make it work. So finally, tomorrow, perhaps I will get connected with the world! Then you will all get these letters that I faithfully write and then don’t bother to send. I’m sorry they will be so late! I just never got motivated enough to download them onto a disk and go to the community center and pay to get online so I could email them. I’m sure I probably have email that I haven’t responded to, also, so I will probably have more apologies to make!
I have an early morning appointment with the doctor tomorrow (basically just to get established), so that will get my lazy bones out of bed so I can get some stuff done! I plan to go to a café and have a latte (since it’s uncool to order latte after 10:00am, I rarely get one! Don’t want to look like an uncouth American, you know!), and go get internet service (God willing), and go check mail, and go grocery shopping, and I may go check out the Castello d’Aviano (Castle of Aviano), which Mike says is little more than ruins, but ruins are exciting to me!!! We have no ruins in America!!! I just love that word, ’ruins’, and the idea that I could see some!!!
Thursday afternoon there is a spouses’ picnic that I’d like to go to. I just have to figure out what to take. I hope it’s over by 7:00pm, though, because Thursday is the ONE night that there is anything good on our ONE English speaking TV channel, AFN. That night there is Friends, and Will and Grace, and ER! Woo-hoo!! All weekend all AFN has shown is sports – yuck! I’m learning to be interested in the news, which is also on ALL the time, but I just can’t muster any interest for baseball or WWF. Needless to say, I really am thankful for video tapes!!! I hear Oprah comes on at 9:00am, but again needless to say, I don’t see that often. I might stand a better chance if I weren’t still waking up every night from 3:00am until about 6:00am or so. I guess jet lag wears off eventually, but in my case sleeplessness is aggravated by being nervous about being alone at night.
I’m definitely down to rambling about nothing, so I guess I will go for now. I love you all and miss you more than you know.
Arrivederci,
Shelly