Finally the weather has gotten warm and downright beautiful. It's about time. Short sleeve shirts, skirts and my little black pumps, yeay! Frankly it's getting too nice of weather, I should be at the beach tomorrow! (Almost, anyway)
I hesitate to even talk about May coming up because it's so nuts. Our Community Auction is next Friday (which my office is running, but do we get the money? No. Explain that if you can.) plus two wine and cheese thingees the following week, and then the week after that I get to go to Florence for a week of intensive language training. _That_ I'm very excited about. Also right now our newsletter editor broke her leg and is at home in traction, so I'm doing our community newsletter weekly. I actually enjoy it, I just wish I didn't have so much else to do. But the good thing is many of the projects and initiatives I've been pushing for for months are really starting to come to fruition. A grant that I applied for (for our Embassy) was accepted and is really rolling now, and if they can figure out how to rewire one tiny office next to mine, we'll have a Local Employment Advisor on staff at the Embassy very very soon. This person would be responsible for assisting family members in finding jobs outside of the embassy. Plus our office intra-net site will be moved to the inter-net site in the upcoming months. This is a really big deal for us. I wrote our Sponsor handbook and will be hosting a reception for them this month (one of the wine and cheese thingees). It's good because I'm getting to see the fruits of my labor, and yet it's all happening at the same time! Thankfully, I was able to stay out of the whole Old Pope/New Pope thing in April. Much more than I expected, frankly. Okay enough of about my job. How's Joel doing? Oh he's doing great. Except for working too much and too late (like I should be talking), and his new boss is rotating in next week and we're very excited.
Joel's surrogate wife (our 2x week housekeeper) is working out well. She is great in the kitchen, irons our sheets, folds our clothes and everything. If we could just find where she puts things away, we're set. Best €50 a week I've ever spent.
This past month we went down to Naples for a day and because they were having great sales, and then this past weekend we went to Aviano, which is in northern Italy and hungout around there. There is an Air Force base there that is really nice and we bought all sorts of things - like cat litter and stuff. We found "our" brand of cat litter in Italy! It's amazing. We checked out a couple small towns like Udine and Pordenone while we were there.
We also went down with a bunch of friends to a town called Guglio on Liberation Day. That's the day the Italians celebrate being liberated from the Nazis in W.W.II. All of Rome apparently goes to little small towns for the day, eats, and then comes home. At least that's what I've figured out so far. Perhaps these towns are supposed to be their original hometowns??? So we trekked through this one town and it was pretty cool.
We've decided that if you want to live in Italy, the last place you want to be is Rome. Pick a town that's 1/2 an hour past the GRA (their beltway) and you're golden. Right now the Italian countryside is GORGEOUS. So luscious and green and beautiful. I can't wait to get out of Rome more often to see the towns. And beaches. Definitely have to do the beaches this summer.
Oh and we did go get our first glimpse of the Vatican (in between Popes).
The cats are good too. We're trying to train Puzza into behaving at night so he doesn't have to be locked up. It doesn't work too well, he tries to cuddle up with you but ends up sitting on your face while you're sleeping. Poor thing tries so hard to be good, and just can't quite pull it off. I'm pretty sure he's bipolar or schizophrenic or something.
Can you believe it was about this time last year that Joel and I found out that we were coming TO Rome? How wild is that? And in June we'll be married a YEAR. Now that is wierd.
So that's it for me. I've not been very good with emails lately and I apologize if it's taken weeks for me to write you back. I've been getting 20-30 emails per day at work and am really sick of the computer and the phone by the time I get home. Still write me though, I am working on getting better at it!
Talk to you all soon!
Love,
Julie and Joel
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