In 16 hours, I have to wake up again!

Wow - four and a half months gone already! I go back and read some of my earlier posts, and I never thought the day would get here, but as usual, time marches on.

Most everything is packed and I’m not going to have to leave that much behind - my old goggles, a few textbooks that I have copies of back in MI, a few articles of clothing that I never really liked anyway and a few shirts that I wore out while here.

There are a few things left undone:

• I still have almost all of the Sicily pictures that I need to post.
• I wanted to do a wrap up post - what I liked, what I’m going to miss, etc. Maybe later today. It’s murderously hot in Florence today and there won’t be much walking around in the afternoon.
• I didn’t buy any leather gloves, but I did get a purse!

I’m stressing out, thinking about traveling home without Jim. Because of how we bought our tickets, he isn’t coming home until Wednesday. He is a good traveler and I usually just follow him around in the airport.

I’m stressing out, wondering if they’ll let me check all of the luggage. They should, NWA lets business class check three pieces. But I check in with Lufthansa, so I’m all kinds of worried about that. A word of advice if you are traveling to Europe: pull out the clothes you want to bring, then put away at least a third. If you are traveling around, you can wear a shirt twice and no one will know, especially if you are visiting multiple cities. Plus, you want room to bring home lots of goodies!

I get home Tuesday evening, then am off to visit family on Thursday. Sigh. There’s a shower for my step sister over the weekend and it will be good to see the fam, but I wish it were a little later in the summer! Too many things got scheduled for the weekend that I get back and I’m having to miss a lot.

As usual, writing is doing me some good. I’m starting to calm down and think I might be able to breathe normally soon.

See you soon!

Touristy stuff!

(Just a warning. You’ll probably get several posts at once. No internet access at the apartment yet, so I write at home and then will upload all of the posts when I have my computer out using the free bandwidth at a local bar. The thick walls of the apartment block any wireless that is available on the street.)

February 14 - 3:30PM local time.

Today was the first day that we did touristy stuff. We went the to Santa Croce Church. This is where Michelangelo, Dante, Machiavelli, Galileo, Marconi, and my favorite, Fermi are all buried. Fermi won the Nobel prize for cool chemistry stuff. (I love the Nobel prize!!) No pictures to post, because flashes aren’t allowed and I didn’t bring the tripod with me. They were restoring the friezes on the church walls so most of it was scaffolded off. They ask you to be quiet but with the banging going on as they were building the scaffolds, I could have led a marching band around and they probably wouldn’t have noticed.

The days wasn’t all sightseeing though. I have to apply for a residency permit. About an hour was spent getting all of the required stuff together, only to get the application and realize it is ALL in Italian. I guess because it is for non-EU citizen I was hoping against all hope that it would be translated. Hopefully I can find a translation on the web for it…

Here are some more pictures:

Jim and me in Detroit before we left:

Jim and Andrea Dei (our host who is the most amazing guy) in the car. If you look closely you can see my hair in the rearview mirror.

Our flight to Florence took us over the Alps. That was AMAZING. All of a sudden, the ground rises up to meet you. You are flying over snow covered mountains. Good thing the camera was in the bag up top or else I’d be posting a thousand crappy photos with the engine taking up half of the picture.

It gave me time to look though. There are little hamlets nestled in the valleys everywhere. You could see the shadow of the mountain covering some of the towns. I would really hate that. Do the people on one side of the valley envy their neighbors on the other side? If you grew up in the morning sun, do you wish you had the evening sun instead?

I kept looking for a valley that didn’t have some sign of a house or a road, and I couldn’t see that many. There were roads that would wind up the side of a mountain and terminate at a lone house or hotel probably. (If I could see it from the plane, it was probably monstrous.) Can you imagine keeping the roads clear in the winter? No thank you.

As we left the Alps, you could start to see the wineries and orchards of northern Italy. You know how in the States as you are flying over the farmlands, it looks like little lego pieces all stacked together? Every plot is a nice square or rectangle; right angles rule. Not so in Italy. I won’t even say that it was like a puzzle because puzzle pieces have some regularity about them. This was more like a fractured mirror. No plots were the same size and they were all irregular shapes. Right angles stuck out like a sore thumb in the landscape. It was pretty cool.

We have an address, but I need to talk to Barbara about getting mail here. So check back soon for our address!

Packed!!

Well, we are all packed up and mostly ready to go. Claire is coming to pick us up in 4 and a half hours. This is the stuff that I am taking:

Cat not included, but I wish he was!!

This is what Jim is taking:

Cat not included either. Or the bed, but we might try to sneak a pillow on.

It only took about 45 minutes to pick out clothes, 1.5 hours to get the courage up to actually put the stuff in the suitcase and about 30 minutes to pack it all. Of course, the fritters are still getting added right and left:

He he. Not really. She wanted to go, but not this time puss!!

Starting to put things in the suitcase was the hard part. That made it all super real to me. I had a few hyperventilating moments, but for the most part have been doing much better than I was on Friday night. Of course the weather is making it very easy to leave. The HIGH yesterday was 4 °F. That’s the high folks!! Wind chill was predicted to be -25 °F overnight. Let’s see, the forecast for tomorrow in Florence is 12 °C (that’s 54°F for you Americans…). So not exactly a heat wave but it is a sight better than here!

So this is the last post from the good old USofA for awhile. Next post, Florence!!

Wow. 50 hours.

I had a little moment today. I can’t believe that I am leaving in 50 hours. I think that things are going OK, everything is on schedule. No, I still haven’t packed. Tomorrow. But it dawned on me: I don’t like to travel. Really. I like to stay home with my stuff. I’m going to be gone from my stuff and my cats for FOUR MONTHS.

I’m really excited to have some time in the lab and learn new things. I’m excited to drink some good Italian wine. I’m excited to … well, I can’t think of anything else right now.

I’m really nervous and scared about a lot more things.

At least Jim will be with me, which makes it better. I promise to break out of my shell and experience new things and have a good time. And take lots of pictures and share them with you.