Starting to Venture around

So yesterday we went into the city to see what it was like for the first time. And I’ll tell you... it was soooo different. The roads are... not roads I don’t think lol and people just walk around in like allay ways, and sometimes a car drives by. And in the center of all of the allay ways is like this large area that is the same type of ground as the allay way "roads" here in the center people are standing around chatting. There are a few restaurants that have tables set up in the middle and waitress come out and waits on you there. Around the center are little shops and a lot of ice cream shops. Jaiden loved it because we were right near a few little girls while we were deciding where to go next.
on the roads, and in the center you would see people just strolling a lot on their bikes, sometimes just one person, sometimes families, sometimes couples.... one of the pictures is an "allay way" or road and you can tell it def would not be a road in the US. Once we decided to go somewhere we were just walking and found this BEAUTIFUL garden with tons of statues and beautiful green grass and trees. That is where Jaiden discovered pigeons!! This for the rest of the day was her main source of entertainment.
Anyways. We ended up finding this little pizzeria and ordered a "peperoni pizza" which in the US is a pepperoni pizza... right... well in Italy it is a pizza with fresh mozzarella and fresh peppers ;) ahah it was still delicious though. So when you order "acqua" or water here you pay usually about 2 Euros which is like maybe $2.50 in the states. Coffee, and tea, and hot chocolate are even cheaper than water here. And you always get it in a glass liter bottle. I definitely thought that was weird at first!!
So Friday night we went to this Chinese restaurant outside of the gate and the toilets... well I should have took a picture of them, if that would have been even partially ok. Well the toilets are in the ground. Litterally and no changing tables. So had to lay Jaiden on the floor next to the toilet bowl and change her diaper. Poor thing.
But the floors in the restaurant were very cool. They were glass and had water with fish underneath the floor.

Just in Italy

So Friday was our first day here. And it is Sunday now (just in case the times come in different back in the states) so Friday we were all definitely tired for sure when we got here. Well anyways our hotel room is a suite, so we have a kitchen, living room, eating area, bedroom that is pretty huge, and a bathroom. The cool thing is that we have more storage in this hotel room than what we had in our entire house haha it’s weird but so true. Well we didn’t see much riding into the base from Venice because we were all asleep. But after we got in our room we unpacked, showered and then ventured around post. well Ill just say we walked out the front door, walked past the post office, the elementary school, High school, library, and movie theatre before we even got to the PX (which is where we were going) and we were walking about hmmmm maybe 5 minutes. Anyways we did a little browsing at the PX and then walked over the commissary which was across the parking lot from the PX. Wes says the whole post is about 2.5 miles in circumference. After walking around and getting some groceries we came back and fell asleep around 6 (pm) I think we were still sooo unbelievably tired we just crashed. anyways all three of us woke up around midnight and were like "ok now what do we do" so we stayed up and watched a movie then fell back asleep and woke up around noon when the room service accidentally walked in on us sleeping. haha oops. so that started the day off yesterday. We got our phones on an Italian plan so we can call each other and people over here. We’re still looking into international plans. We think we might just wait until we get our home phone though. But last night we went off post. It was so cool! The gate that you go out to get to the food areas is kind of at the end of post with not much there. So it’s like a dead zone, then you go out the gate and there are these small little cars buzzing by, tons of people everywhere you look riding their bikes. And the houses are all set back about... maybe 25 feet, and a huge gate with a pass code to get in. That was a little strange. One frisky looking Italian little guy comes out to close his gate and was looking at us weird. You think even our close spell out "Italy newbie’s"? Well anyways we went to find this pizza place, it was closed when we got there so then we were like great!! Where are going to find food. By this time it was like 530 pm and we were starving. So there was a bald italiano man sitting on the railing type thing so I asked him "dove... pizza?" which means where the pizza is. Lol good Italian knows. Anyways we couldn’t understand a word of his paragraph long response but the way he used his hands to motion out every word he was saying we knew he meant go to the other side of the y intersection and there is one because the one behind was closed. So we went over there and that pizza place was closed for vacation lol.... anyways across the street was an italiano restaurante so we went there. This tiny little place. there was a lady who was the hostess, waitress, bust girl, pretty much everything but one guy was in back to cook. And her little daughter was riding around on her scooter inside the store. We were the ones there when we first walked in so it was so cute to listen to the little Italian girl talking to her mom. It seemed like a movie. Later who I believe was the grandma showed up. And the granddaughter showed her some new twirl that she could do. Who knows but it seemed so cute from sitting in the background watching. So we both got "three course meals" for 10 Euros each. Which consists of pasta for like... the salad part, then a meat, and a veggie. And we figured that in dollars our meals were $14.00 a piece which seems like more than in the US but there was no tax or tip. So our cost was 10 euro a piece and we paid 20 euro total. Where as in the US our cost would have been $14 a piece, plus tax and tip and our total would have been around $35ish? So anyways yes a euro is more than a dollar but it ends up being about the same we would spend if it was just a dollar. Idk I had it all worked out into my head yesterday. So when we left we saw this little fresh fruit and veggie store so we walked through it and they had just about every kind of fruit that was fresh fresh like it was just picked and rinsed off and set in the display. Anyways we bought a little thing of raspberries and it was 3 euro!!! For a little tiny thing of raspberries that like 4.25 or something like that in dollars. and the strawberries that we bought at the commissary were the same kind we saw in this store we think they are just the way they are in Italy, they are really bright red like almost an orangish or pinkish tint and SOOOO SOURRRR. So anyways then we came back and hung out here, now we are still just hanging out here. J loves it so far, but I don’t think she even really knows what is going on yet. Well love you all and we will keep posting!! And if anyone knows anything about Skype let us know. Please “Grazie”

hey hey

Well it has definately been a while. Im sure everybody that sees we have updated this blog is probably going ITS ABOUT TIME! i know i know. i hear you all talking from here. so anyways. we have some pictures of the reception on here finally. and the bridal pictures i forgot to load on my computer, so ill have to get the cd to do that. but this picture im working on for something for eric when he comes home. i was playing with the focus and all that today... tell me what you think...



cute huh! well here are some from the reception that i like the alot.