Big update:

Rome is beginning to feel more like our home: the kids have survived their first week at school, Becca is getting into the swing of her work responsibilities, our belongings are mostly unpacked, our Mazda will be delivered on Monday, and I'm slowly adjusting to the responsibilities of keeping the house going while daily life keeps moving on at its leisurely pace.

Labor day was the first day of school for the kids, and Becca was off. She was out of town on business for the new parent orientation, and we drove Cori in to school on the first day so Becca could meet the kids' teachers (Palmer wanted to ride the bus). After the introductions and getting the kids settled, we left the school and came home to work on the house. Palmer's dresser won't fit up the stairs and the poor kid has no storage in his room at all, so we went to IKEA to look at dressers for him. Becca's boss called my cell while we were shopping, and told us that Palmer had fallen during recess and cut his eyebrow, right above his eye. The school didn't have any numbers for us (when we registered for school, we didn't have any local telephone numbers), so they went through Becca's office - calling one of the high level muckety-mucks in Rome and having him get in touch with Becca's agency. Our "Good Parent" cards got a little folded, mutilated, and spindled that day. Turns out Palmer was fine, just banged up a little. He's still got the black eye to show for it, and (on based on my advice) is now saying "You should see the other guy!" when asked about his shiner.

Becca was by herself in the office for a good part of August, which is a VERY slow month here. Most of the locals take at least 2 weeks of the month off, and it was a good chance for Becca to ease into her responsibilities. As September began, one of her administrative coworkers had to extend her time off for family reasons; her other administrative coworker has been out on maternity leave since before our arrival here, and comes back to work within the next week or so. As September has progressed, Becca's workload has increased steadily. She's working hard to keep up with not only her normal job responsibilities, but with the work that needs to be done to help the office run smoothly. This will get better as her coworkers return, but right now, she's working her butt off.

Our shipment arrived (mostly) in one piece. There were a few dings and scrapes, as are normal with any move. We've gotten the majority of our stuff unpacked; there are still boxes here and there, but I would say we're 75 - 80 percent done at this point. We've still got some challenges ahead of us: for all of the storage space that we have here (built in closets, storage area downstairs, etc) we still brought WAY too much stuff. Everything needs to be organized, and we need to make up spaces to put our remaining stuff to where we can find it later, if necessary.

We bought a car from someone who was leaving the country a few weeks ago. It's a 2000 (or 2001, I can't remember which) Renault Megane Coupe with about 50k miles on it... it's Becca's commuter car; when I drive it (or ride in it, for that matter), I have to push the seat so far back that there's no room for a child in the back seat behind me. I can squish up a little bit, but whichever kid's riding behind me gets a minuscule amount of footroom. Off and on for the last few weeks, we've been borrowing a car from one of Becca's coworkers and avoiding driving ours, since it's not registered properly (and probably isn't truly street legal without proper plates) and still has the "CD plates" from the previous owner. We're looking forward to getting our Mazda, which we'll drive with our Texas plates until it's properly registered. The general consensus around here is that while local plates which begin with "CD" rarely get pulled over (because the plates indicate that the driver has a connection with a foreign government in some form or fashion), U.S. plates almost never get pulled over, because the police here mostly turn a blind eye to U.S. drivers, except in cases where you blatantly disregard the rules of the road. Once both of our cars are properly registered in our (Becca's) name, neither vehicle will have CD plates on it; the basic difference between CD plates and normal local plates (which both of our cars will have) is that cars with CD plates are allowed to drive in the controlled sections of the city, due (in part) to the position (within a foreign government) of the owner/driver. Becca's position doesn't rate CD plates.

Things take longer in Rome. Things take longer in Rome. Things take longer in Rome. Maybe if I say it enough times, I'll actually remember it when planning tasks. Before returning Becca's coworker's car yesterday, I took it to a local gas station (5 minutes away) to get a car wash. It took 2 hours. We live a 5 minute walk up the street from a supermarket. Every time I walk down there, it takes over an hour to get just a few items. It's just a much slower pace here, and I get quite frustrated that at the end of the day, I've only managed to get a couple of tasks accomplished, whereas I should be celebrating that I've actually accomplished anything. It's a completely different mindset that you need to be in here. I go down to the store every couple of days for groceries - milk is sold in 1 liter bottles here, and I typically buy two or three bottles at a time, along with pasta, veggies, fruits, a bottle of wine every now and then. Wine is incredibly cheap here. Wine is cheaper than soda, bottled water, or beer. It's fairly decent wine, but it's not categorized by grape the same way that wines in the states are: there's no pinot noir, merlot, chardonnay, etc. There's rossa (red), and blanco (white). You can buy wines from different regions of Italy - I assume that different regions grow different varieties of grapes, but there doesn't seem to be any correlation between the grapes of certain regions and the traditional wine varieties.

It's been a while since our last blog entry, and I apologize. As you've read above, we've been keeping busy. We've got internet access at home now, along with home, cell, and U.S. telephone numbers. I've sent out a couple of emails with contact information in them, please let one of us know (via email) if you didn't get the numbers and we'll send them to you.