Immigration

Its Friday. Katrina did not sleep very well last night. I slept pretty well, other than being woken up several times by Stevie the cat. Katrina is busy, busy at work and has a lot on her mind. I'm doing all I can to let her relax when she is home.

We had a 10am meeting with Olga at the police station this morning. For those who don't remember, Olga is our relocation expert. Back in August we met at the police station for the formal application of our residency here in Italy. This morning we were issued our residency cards, after being finger printed one more time - this time all fingers and palms. Our cards are very high tech and fancy with several holigrams and a micro chip. We are good through February 2011, so we will eventually have to work on an extension of a few months. We'll deal with that later. We are official residents of Italy, at least for the next 1 1/2 years.

We dropped Brandon off at school (he had to be with us at the police station), then I took Katrina to work. On the way home I stopped at IKEA for a few things we needed and ended up having meatballs for lunch while I was there.

I also bought a small lemon tree from a roadside vendor. We have two large concrete pots on our balcony that have been sitting empty. I know I wanted a small tree of some sort, so why not a lemon tree. It should get plenty of sun where I placed it. I ended up planting it in the smaller of the two large pots. The bigger one will be kept empty until spring when we plan to plant some cherry tomatoes. Oh, I also bought a cactus at IKEA. My green thumb that I had with plants in the US must not have followed me here. I have killed 3 out of 6 plants I have purchased here, so I thought I would try a cactus.

Brandon and I walked over to Gelateria Jody with Hugo, Amelie and Hugo's Mom, Sheila (pronounced Shayla). We all enjoyed some cool treats, then the kids played while Sheila and I shared experience of living in Italy. Her family has only been here for a year.

This evening Brandon and I met Mike and Katrina at Mexicali for dinner. Ahhhh, Mexican food. Its not quite like home, but it sure tastes good. I even had a Mexican beer.