Italy Update

Katrina's work permit is in hand. She sent me an electronic copy yesterday. One piece of paper that gives Katrina permission to live and work in Italy for 2 years. She is guarding it with her life. She told me that she was even nervous putting the permit through the scanner at work.

Our next step is two fold. Katrina will be taking her permit to the Italian consulate office in Portland on Monday to apply for her Visa. We are told that this is just a formality. It requires some paperwork, approval by the consulate, and her passport. Once the consulate signs off on it, all of this paperwork must be mailed to the Italian embassy in San Francisco. The second part is for Brandon and I. Our Italian representative has filed for and entry permit for Brandon and I. This allows us to live in Italy, but could not be applied for until the work permit was issued. We are told it will take about 10 days to obtain. Once we get the entry permit, Brandon and I will need to make the same trip to Portland and follow the same process to obtain our Visa's.

That summarizes where we are not in the process of moving to Italy. We also need to start taking an inventory of our belongings, sort what we are taking and what we are storing, setup a move date with the moving company, meet with HP's tax service which will help us with our finances and taxes for the next couple of years, sell our car and rent our house out, and many more details yet to be worked out.

Its a much bigger process than just taking a vacation to Italy. Our hope is for an early April move, but we now know that this can be a slow process.