Ben's Trip

Dear class,

I have made it all the way to Switzerland I went to Amsterdam and Austria and Germany. A funny thing happened on Christmas my brother Ethan throw up. we stayed in Amsterdam for Christmas in the Netherlands.

Ben: To My Class

Dear class,

I got on a train yesterday and it was fine. I am at the airport right now and we are going to leave soon. When I get to Italy my school time is 7:55 to 1:30. I hope you guys are having fun there.

From Benjamin

Ethan: Italy Post

dear Mrs.Stones class.
We were on a train yesterday.
The train was fun and long.

Now we are at the airport today.
We are going to get gum too!

Our flight is in 2 hours.
We are going to line up for the flight in 2 hours.

Gettin' Our Public Transit On

Dave sold his car on Wednesday, so Ethan and I practiced using public transit this weekend.

*I downloaded the app for Blogger to my phone, but it won't let me post pictures from my phone. I'll try to fix that when I have a few minutes, because I don't want to lose the ability to post on the fly!

Bureaucracy Never Sleeps

I have a couple of friends that once said Italian bureaucracy never sleeps.  They learned this as part of their 2+ year adventure as then aspiring academics in southern Italy, where every morning they would wake up to some of the world's best coffee, each evening eat Italian delicacies that we in the US can only dream about, and the rest of the time work tirelessly to become proper, long term Italian residents with official visas and residency permits and national healthcare and such.  To me viewing this from afar, it didn't seem like Italian bureaucracy was having issues getting to sleep.  Rather, foreigners trying to be Italian residents never slept because they would miss that one appointment at the Questura Office of Immigration and have to wait another 2 months to get another chance to apply for their Permesso di Soggiorno.

A benefit of having friends move to Italy for a while meant that I have witnessed the process of going from Ann Arborite to Italian.  I know that it is not a trivial process.  I understand that, just like building a computer out of 10,000 dominoes, getting the right forms and documents in line to apply for an Italian visa and doing everything in the right order is a delicate process that requires careful planning and attention to fine detail.

Ben after successfully completing the visa application process

"I'm going to start this early, and do everything I possibly can to make this an efficient and low stress process." said 2017 me.

Maybe next time.

The Situation Room

Christmas and packing. 

There are many, many lists right now.

Goals

I will learn to make an edible pasta sauce. It is not a small undertaking. Dave generously calls my cooking 'disheveled'.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Hopefully this is the closest I ever get.

My day started with a trip to DTW for my Global Entry interview (✓). Dave tells me that this will be very useful for our travels. It was a good day for it, as I already had taken a half day from work to visit the dentist (✓).

Tonight we are putting up our tree (✓), which is earlier than it usually goes up. The tree is also smaller than usual. 

Checklists

I have a tendency to procrastinate. For a trip like this, I have to work actively to make sure that I don't leave too much to the last minute, though. Since this summer, I've been working to prepare everything that needs to fall into place to leave our house, packed, on December 21. Now that we are three weeks out (!), I am trying to do something every day to keep the checklist for the last week down.

This past week's checklist:
 -Order Christmas gifts
 -Pack and store a box of clothes from our closet
 -Purchase supplies to restock the house between renters
 -(I swear I did more than this!)

Next week's checklist:
 -Pack and store another box from our closet
 -Go to the airport for the Global Entry Interview
 -Mail Christmas cards
 -Start wrapping Christmas gifts
 -Put up our Christmas tree
 -Sort and store supplies to restock the house between renters
 -Send handwritten note to the boys' school to unenroll them

At some point I will have a final checklist. I'm not ready to do that yet!

Ethan: Trip to Italy

                                                                                                                                                                       




deer Italy






I can't what to go to Italy.I am excited for the mountains. I Want to hike the mountains.