Hi everyone and thanks again for following our little journey here in Italy. Lots happening here; everyone is excited about the holidays of course. Over the last few weeks it has really started to feel like we officially live here (and being "official" is no small feat here...):
Our stuff finally arrived! It took much longer than we thought it would, but our shipment arrived in early-November. We thought we understood how an international move works, based on our experience going to England back in 2002, but it is very different when you're doing it on your own, not as a corporate client, and you have...this is very important...less than a full container (if you ever move overseas, talk to us about the shipping process before you sign anything). Let's just say we were not happy with the folks at International Van Lines (you may have seen Barbara's tweets about it), and it took getting ahold of the President of the company to get it resolved.
But it's all good now - some prized possessions are pictured below...
Glad to have: Paddleboard stuff, "dude" mug, baseball glove, Peachtree Road Race quilt
Meanwhile, we have discovered several formal and informal ways to know you officially live somewhere:
1. I recently received my Carta Di Identita (Identity card), which is a little like a social security card, but much more important here - no one's asked me to "show my papers," but if they do, we are legitimate, tax-paying residents of Chieri, Italy.
To get the cards, we had to endure an odd procedure; a local police officer must come by our apartment to verify that we lived here - so we sat around the apartment for a few days, in anticipation of the poliziotto/poliziotta that might come knocking. Finally she arrived one day, looked around for 10 seconds, had us sign a form, and ecco qua, the identity cards showed up a few days later!
2. We also just received our Permesso di Soggiorno, or "permit of stay" which allows us to live in Italy for the next two years, and legally go in or out of the country. This required the school to sponsor us, it's tied directly to my job teaching at IST. Took a while but worth it!
3. Our landlord put our name in a couple of very important places: Our parking spot ("riservato" for the Black Panda) and the post box (pretty fancy, right? Mostly junk mail, just like in the U.S.).
Side note: I am now driving the Panda, yes with manual transmission! So far we are without incident (fingers crossed); this has been a big relief for my lovely-but-kinda-busy chauffeur, aka Barbara.
As the holidays approach, lots of friends and colleagues are asking "will you go home for Christmas?" It's a funny question, where is "home" when you move away for a couple of years? So I keep saying, yes we'll be home, here in Chieri! I guess all I need is my name on a mailbox and I'm all in. :)
But this year will be super-special because we'll be celebrating Christmas here with the kids coming to visit. We are super excited to see them, and to share this place/lifestyle with them for a couple of weeks. And the Christmas spirit is alive and well here in Italy! There are Christmas markets popping up here in Chieri, and in Torino, and pretty much everywhere (in fact, we took a quick weekend trip to Lyon, France to see their Christmas market too).
Chieri is all lit up for Natale: (l) The Arch, (r) the shops in the main pedestrian area
In fact the holiday season started last week with Thanksgiving - although not a holiday here, the school has a very nice tradition of sponsoring an "American-style Thanksgiving" (is there any other kind? Oh wait, sorry Canada my bad, yes you do Thanksgiving too).
The chef who does the yummy school lunch every day does an amazing spread for Thanksgiving and
we had about 150 American and married-to-or-friendly-with-Americans people at a festive dinner
on the Thursday night. We seriously missed being home for Thanksgiving, but this took the edge off
for sure! Of course, we were back to work the next day (it was a school night, after all).
A belated Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and best wishes for a wonderful Christmas and Hanukkah season. We miss you!