Being Real.

There are some misconceptions about living abroad with the military.  Some people think it's all travel and culture and excitement, but the reality is we are living our daily life with work, school, dinner and such just the same; just in a different country.

Think for a minute.  Do you go out of town every weekend and see a museum?  Do you fly to visit a town for a few days every other weekend?  Of course you don't.  That would be expensive and you wouldn't get anything done around your house.  We don't do that stuff either.

Now there are some people here that do.  Every single weekend they are traveling some place and every long week-end they are going to someplace awesome in Europe.  Don't get me wrong, I think it's amazing for them to be able to go and do so much and I wish them well.  We just cannot do that.

First we have five people in our family.  Since Ethan turned 12, that means we have the joy of paying adult prices for him.  Any flying requires five plane tickets.  Sometimes there are discounts for Gavin and Norah, but not always.  Because we are five people and Norah is over 24 months old we have to pay for two hotel rooms!  The hotels here in Europe are not like what we are accustomed to in the US.  They are much smaller.  We haven't actually stayed in one yet, but from research and talking with other people, they are tiny.  So just for lodging we have to double our price.

We have Norah.  She is going on 3 years old, but she is a preschooler with attitude.  She cannot handle long drawn out walking trips and most everything here is walking.  She needs to potty often and public restrooms are not abundant in many of these small towns and villages.

We have me.  As much as I like to downplay my back problems, the reality is I suffered a spinal cord injury with the ruptured disc and the Cauda Equina Syndrome.  On top of that I had another surgery, a bladder tack and hysterectomy in January.  I physically cannot do a ton of waking.  I am slowly rebuilding my strength, but I am slow.  And I do still have some minor bladder issues as well.

We have our personality.  We lean toward being homebodies with the exception of vacation time.  We love to road trip, but let me tell you it is very different here than in the US.  We get anxious when it comes to doing things off base.  We aren't afraid as much as we are nervous at messing things up.  We are getting better and I'm sure it will take the entire three years for us to get anywhere near comfortable.  We are trying though, in our own little way.

We have Gavin, the ultimate homebody.  It is difficult to get him to even go to the commissary or Exchange. He would much rather stay home and play with his toys, play with his friends, watch a movie, anything but travel.  We are working on him too.

We still own our house in Virginia Beach.  We wanted to sell the house so it wouldn't be a worry while we are living here, but have you seen the housing market?  We owe more on our house than what it is worth now.  So all the extra money we get for COLA (cost of living allowance), we have to use a good bit of it to pay for our mortgage. We have it rented out, but no where near the entire amount of our mortgage. We also are trying to pay off our debts.  We do not want to use credit cards and build up more debt.

So there are our reasons for not going to Rome, Venice, Paris etc. every weekend.  We are planning some pretty cool trips soon though.

I'm going to be truly honest about our experiences here.  I know it's easy to romanticize everything to do with Europe, Italy, Sicily; but I'm going to try to refrain from doing that.  These are the reasons it's a big deal for us to go to Ikea and be able to tell the cashier that I was going to use a credit card and for me to understand that he needed to see a form of I.D.  For us, it's the small victories.  And for you, you have the joy of reading all of them here.

WWII Trip...Part 2

The boys and Cody went on the second part of the WWII trip earlier this month.  They spent a lot of time on the bus riding from one "Pill box" to the next.  This trip was less impressive and informative than the first one.  They did see the beach where the Allied Forces landed, but it was just a beach.  I don't have the description this time (misplaced the Preview, if I find it, I'll update here).

The highlight of this trip was the food at the Agriturismo. Overall they said that the trip was too long and was very repetitive with all the stops at the pillboxes.  They said they would not recommend this one unless they shortened it up or added something different to it.

This post will contain mostly photos since they didn't really like the trip as much as the last one and didn't have much to tell me.

A monument

The boys in front of one of the "pill boxes".  

The beach at Gela where the Allied Forces landed.

Gela, Italy

Blood red orange grove.  They stopped here to see another pill box and the owner of the property allowed them to pick some oranges.  They are super delicious!

Monument

View from inside a pill box (Gavin's shoe on the right)

Gavin conquering a hill

Beautiful view of the countryside

Lunch time!

Wine of course

Antipasto, Cody's favorite parts of the meal

Meat

Ricotta cheese

Pasta

More pasta

salad

Meat

Oranges...there are a lot of oranges here!

Canollis mmmm

Inside the restaurant

Lemoncello, a digestive.  :)  LIQUOR

More pill boxes on the hillside

a water park

WWII Museum.

Cody and the boys took an ITT trip last weekend.  Since I had surgery Jan 4th, I'm not able to do much of anything so he and the boys took off and me and Norah had a girls day.  She and I watched Princess movies and played with baby dolls.

The ITT Trip this time was described as follows:

WWII Tour (Part 1)
Saturday, January 14th
Tour the WWII Museum and German Cemetery and learn about "Operasione Husky."  Then we will go to Marchesana in the center of Catania just behind Palazo Biscari, which was the "General Quarter" of the Allies after the invasion of Sicily.  (Lunch and fees are included).

Score!  Lunch included!  Easy peasey.

The boys set off on their adventure early on Saturday morning at 8am.  The tour was full and included one of Ethan's teachers and a counselor.

The first stop on the tour was the German cemetery near Motta.

Here is a beautiful photo of Mt. Etna.

The next stop on the tour was a WWII museum in Catania.  The museum was, in the words of Gavin, "Awesome!" They did not allow photos in the museum, but Gavin snapped a couple before being told otherwise; however I can't seem to locate them on my computer right now.  If I find them, I'll update them on here.

Cannon outside of the museum.

Taken before they were told not to take photos.

Next to the museum was a radio collection.  A man had his private radio collection open for viewing and the boys enjoyed seeing the old-fashioned radios.

They boarded the bus and headed to the Restaurant to eat lunch.  Gavin was starving!  They were all so hungry that they forgot to take pictures of their meals (I had asked them to do it before the left and they even told themselves to remember before they went in, but were just so hungry they forgot).

The choices were beef, horse or one other thing that they weren't sure what it was.  They all went with beef. You know if I were there, I'd tried the horse.  (I think).  They had bread and pasta.  Gavin was so hungry he ate his entire serving of beef!  For desert were oranges and Cody had a lemoncello.

The name of the restaurant.   I think Marchesana is a family name and "trattoria" is translated as either Tavern or Inn. 

Gavin showing that he ate all of his beef.  You can see some of Cody's beef left on his plate.  Gavin left the salad alone.  

My boys 

Cody's lemoncello

Cody enjoying his lemoncello

 After lunch the next stop was a British cemetery.  Gavin was fascinated by all of the headstones and took many, many pictures

Overall the boys and Cody really enjoyed their trip.  They learned a lot about the Allies here in Sicily during WWII.  They are scheduled to go on another trip later this month that is Part 2 of this one.