Where to begin...

So much has happened since I posted last... it's hard to know where to start!

First of all, I had a fantastic Christmas with my parents. Odd, but fantastic. Odd in the sense that it really didn't feel like Christmas at all. Italy just isn't that festive when it comes to the holiday season. I heard maybe two Christmas carols over the entire break, and they don't really do a whole lot in the way of garlands and lights. The main indication that it's Christmas here is the truckloads of panettone you see everywhere. Panettone (which my brother seems to know but I had never heard of) is a special fluffy Christmas bread/cake with candied orange and lemon zest, raisins, and other mystery ingredients (sometimes almonds). It looked scary to me and reminded me of fruitcake, but it's nothing like fruitcake and is really really good!

We traveled throughout Venice, Florence, and Rome, packing it in Smith style and hitting every monument and basilica we could possibly manage. This led to some mad dashes to trains and, on one occasion, the purchasing of new tickets for the train we'd missed. We were worn out by the time it was over! I really didn't realize how much it had taken out of me until after my parents had left. It takes a lot of mental energy to try to manage a schedule, find good restaurants, and do a ghetto job at translations and question asking.

But it was great. It will be great to get the photos developed to see all the things I ran through in a daze! It's one of those things that almost happens too fast. I look back and think of all the great times we had, but it already seems so far away.

I'm definitely out of the honeymoon stage. That's mainly because I've spent all the tourist money I had (and then some), and now I have to come back to the real world and work a job. I got crazy sick right before New Years as well, and I'm just now recovering. Everything shuts down here from Christmas to the 8th of January. (Which explains why I haven't done much on the internet. All the cafe's are closed! I'm borrowing a friend's connection now.) I've had a lot of time to reevalute my plans here, which is good. It's easy to get off course.

It's funny too, because the Rome I live in isn't the Rome I visited with my parents. Of course the people here don't spend their time thinking about the bones of Peter being buried across the river in the basilica, or Domitian draining Nero's lake to build the Colosseum. They think about buying the milk after work, and what time the kids have to be at their soccer game. Life goes on here as it would anywhere in the States, it's just that it's going on close to some really cool ruins! But those ruins and museums are much easier to enjoy when you're spending the money to enter!

I've spent a good 15 hours of work on figuring out my work and visa status, and feel like I've accomplished about an hour's worth of progress. If there's one thing that will change my dream of living in Italy, it's beaurocracy. There just doesn't seem to be any desire to do anything here efficiently. It looks like I will go back to being a student due to the nightmare of getting any other kind of visa processed. Italian lessons seem appropriate anyway...

I start up work again on the 8th, which I'm excited about. I've had too much time with no money in a place where nothing is open anyway. Being sick didn't help either! I'm just glad to be focusing in on my language acquisition and being able to utilize the teacher training I got through the CELTA. As nothing happens quickly here, I'm learning a new level of patience and just trying to take one step at a time.

I find myself spending a lot of time thinking of you all. It just isn't possible for me to write everyone I think of. Ray asked me if he had done something wrong the other day, and it isn't like that at all! The cafe's have just been closed, and I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to make sense of the steps needed to get my paperwork in order. It's not personal, I swear. You all are much loved and much missed. I'm much more likely to respond to emails at my gmail account than any other site, etc. so please feel free to contact me there.

I love you all and miss you dearly. I hope you had fabulous holidays with your families and friends, and I hope to talk to you soon! Ciao!