Ci stiamo muovendo in Italia ... Credo che

Translated, that means “We’re moving to Italy… I think.”

So here’s what happened.  As I said before, all 5 guys that were supposed to go to Spang, volunteered for Aviano (Italy), so we were back to square one.  Two of the guys already have their household goods (HHG’s in military acronyms) on the way to Germany, so we’re assuming that they’re going to Spang, but we really don’t know for sure.  The three guys left were Mark, Chris and Dave.  Mark volunteered for Aviano first and Osan (Korea) second.  Chris volunteered for Osan first and Shaw (South Carolina) second.  And Dave volunteered for Aviano first and Shaw second.  They ended up giving Chris Aviano because his wife is also in the Air Force and that’s the only place they could get them together.  They gave Mark Osan and they gave Dave Shaw.  Well Chris and his wife both didn’t want to go to Aviano, so they said that Chris could go to Korea and then Mark and Dave would have to decide who was going to Aviano together.  Dave is currently up at Nellis AFB in Vegas so Mark called him and they both wanted to go so Dave suggested that they use his friends iPhone that has a random number generator on it and Dave said he’d take number’s 0-4 and Mark could have numbers 5-9, and whichever number came up would determine who got Aviano.  Mark agreed and they pushed the button and a 7 came up, so Mark got Aviano and Dave is going to Shaw.  My dad is taking Mark to Vegas with him bc that’s the 2nd time he’s gotten an assignment based on luck.  Although we all know how that first assignment turned out….

It’s hard not to get excited about this assignment now, even though we still don’t have orders for it yet and we have no clue when we’ll be heading over there, if at all.  I’m scared to start planning and to get excited because I’m scared the rug is going to be pulled from beneath us again.  I guess all I can do is pray that this assignment sticks and that in a month or so we’ll be in Italy.

So Aviano is about an hour and a half north east of Venice, right at the foothills of the Alps.  The Adriatic Sea is about 45 mins south, and Rome (where Mark’s brother is) is about 5.5 hours away.  Vienna, Austria is 5.5 hours away, Switzerland is 6.5 hours away, and Prague is about 8.5 hours away.  Living in Italy will give us AMAZING opportunities to travel all over eastern Europe – in a lot of the countries you don’t really like about when you think of Europe.  We’ll be VERY close to both Slovenia and Croatia, which will be interesting.  We’ll also be fairly near Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Bulgaria and Montenegro (where the Bond movie, Casino Royale, was filmed).  Greece will be a train ride away (long train ride, but still a train ride) and quite a few people have told us they’ve gone to Egypt while living over there.  How cool would that be?

So I’m not holding my breath, but I’m praying that we do get to move there.  I know about 3 words in Italian and there’s a whole new set of road blocks about moving to Italy.  Abbie and I need special passports and visas to live there and we don’t have a whole lot of time to get those done.  We’re hoping we’ll get more information on all of that this week.  I’ll keep you updated.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!