The Update is Finally Here

Well, its 8:15 on a Friday night and I’m far away from home, but close to a fast Internet connection. What better time to finally – and I do mean finally – do some updating to the blog.

Wow. That’s about all I can say. Wow – what incredible and rich blessings God has bestowed on my family and I in the previous months. Whether it be delivering us safely from the U.S. to a foreign land, watching out for us in the process of selecting a new home, or providing us with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for travel, I feel like there’s been a constant hand of wisdom and guidance leading us along. I’m so grateful for a God who so faithfully cares for his children, and pray that all our experiences overseas bring us a little closer to a God who’s so abundant.

As I’ve alluded to in previous postings, we’ve been busy lately. Italy is an amazing place. Sure, it’s dirty, congested, and scary at times, but it’s also incredibly exciting. Being so far outside our comfort zone has been incredibly satisfying for me, and while Melissa may not admit it, I know she’s proud of the challenges she’s overcome as well. Frankly, I’m continually amazed at how my small-town Tennessee wife has so quickly transformed into an outgoing, independent, multinational force to be reckoned with. Believe me, Italians drivers don’t want to cross her when Ella’s strapped in the back seat.

My command here is simply unbelievable; from top to bottom, some of the best people I could ever have imagined working with. Probably most important, they’ve been incredibly patient with me as I’ve worked through both a new job and setting up the house here. I’ll stop with that, but suffice it to say that I miss the folks in Norfolk, but I’m very, very happy in Naples.

So, down to business. What have we been doing the past few months? Good question. The short answer? Travel! It feels like we’ve been constantly on the go. So much so, in fact, that I’m looking forward to a few months after the New Year to just sit in my house, enjoy some sunsets over the Mediterranean, and become intimately familiar with some of Italy’s finest wines.

Our series of trips began with another weekend jaunt to Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast. We only stayed for a day, and it rained for part of that day, but if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: that place is beautiful. It’s also big for shopping small little shops, perfect for wasting a run-of-the mill weekend. I don’t have all my pics on me at the moment, but this is one from the trip where we stopped to take a breather. Behind Melissa, who’s taking the picture of Ella and I in front of a monastery garden, there is a sheer cliff of probably 800+ feet, straight down to the ocean. That’s how most of the coast there is: imagine a version of Big Sur in California that’s been lived-in for thousands of years, and that’s Amalfi.

Halloween hit in full force a few weeks after our weekend in Sorrento. Seemingly before conception, my wife has planned to dress my daughter up as a ladybug, and nothing could stand in her way. I have to say, it was a good call; her cuteness went pretty much unrivaled (though I was compelled to take a few pics of random Star Wars-outfitted kids, just cause I thought they were awesome too). The military community held a huge Halloween festival in a park they own here (Carney Park – created inside an extinct volcano). It was a blast, especially with all the folks from work bringing their munchkins too. Again, I’m a little limited on pics, but trust me: it was awesome.

After Halloween, we decided it was time for something bigger, so we used the Veteran’s Day three-day weekend for a trip to Rome. What a great place. I’m sure we’ll visit it many times before we leave, but the treasures in that city are literally around every corner. Rather than fight the traffic, we decided to take the train (both from Naples to Rome and also within Rome); and what a great call – it was simple and incredibly easy to get around. We decided to take this trip and check all the tourist boxes: we saw the Vatican museum and the Sistine Chapel; the Spanish Steps, the Coliseum, some amazing Roman shopping, and perhaps my favorite Roman site – Trevi Fountain. We arrived at the fountain around dusk: a sight I hope everyone reading this gets to experience one day. I have great pics, but true to form, I don’t have any with me where I am; it, too, will have to wait.

The week after Rome, we moved into our house. Not spending the weekend prepping the house made the move-in fairly hectic, especially painting. Thanks to some help from some friends, we managed to add a little color to the stark white walls, which I hope adds a little charm to the place, and certainly makes it feel more like home. With tiled floors and 10-foot ceilings, it’s a nice place; a little old and the bathrooms are a bit awkward, but it has plenty of room (a quality most houses we saw didn’t have). If we had it all to do over again, we would have brought much less household goods, but as they say – snakes on a plane (i.e., it is what it is). It’s still a good place, albeit a little farther from the community we wanted to be in. I'd planned on giving you a pic of EB and mommy in their unpacking doo-rags, but Blogger is preventing me, as usual...

Taking care not to relax, we immediately booked a flight and hotel in Paris for Thanksgiving. Round trip fare for all three of us, 2 and ½ weeks before departure, was only 325 euros. We took a step down in hotel quality, and managed to spend almost a week in Paris for a fraction of what it would have been flying from the states. Not only was the trip exciting, but it was also a perfect diversion for our first real separation from family for the holidays.

Paris was incredible. I’d visited it once before in high school, and for some reason had come away thinking it was dirty and unpleasant. I’ve since decided that I was just an ass in high school. Paris could perhaps be one of my new favorite places on earth. It was cold outside, mostly rainy, and our room wasn’t very big, but the city was beautiful, not crowded, and filled with people who struck us as uncharacteristically kind. So far as cleanliness is concerned, it appeared to me to be one of the best-kept metropolitan areas I’ve run across. In the end, I think the differences in my perception between 16 and 29 can mostly be summed up to the older me having seen more places. But I still think the 16 year old me was an ass.

I won’t go into great detail on all the things we saw in Paris, but our extended stay (and the knowledge that we could easily come back over the course of the next 3 years) really allowed us to relax and enjoy the city. My favorite two activities were the Catacombs and, of course, the nighttime boat ride on the Seine. Next time we’ll get a babysitter and take a dinner cruise. I can’t imagine anything much more romantic.



As if it couldn’t get any better, upon my return from Paris, I immediately found out that due to a prosecutor shortage in Spain, my assistance was needed there for about 10 days in early December to help try a sexual assault case. As you can imagine, I was devastated – 10 days in an area renowned for wine and sherry production, relatively warm, and a short drive away from both Gibraltar and Portugal. Yep – I was devastated. Concerns of cost initially made us think that it was impractical to fly Melissa and Ella here, but once I arrived, I found tickets out of Rome for 3 people (dad included, who was already scheduled to come to Naples around that time), round trip, for only 200 euro. That’s so cheap I couldn’t afford for them not to come.

The end-result of taking so many trips is that our house still doesn’t have pictures on the wall, and there are still several opened – but not unpacked – boxes left in the house. I suppose it’s a small price to pay to literally double our history of travel in less than two months. We’ve still made time to make trips to the park, including finally squeezing in Ella’s first ride in a swing!

So, lets see…a few other bullet updates of life here so far:

• We’ve picked up Nash, who was none the worse for wear in his halfway houses. We missed him, and Ella’s having a good time reacquainting herself with “Tuh” as we’re sure she calls him. I’m just glad we didn’t ruin my CO’s house, who ended up taking care of him for a few weeks.
• Melissa was fortunate enough to contract food poisoning one night at the only American sit-down chain restaurant on base: TGI Fridays. A miserable night, a trip to the ER and three IV bags qualify her to make this small suggestion: don’t eat the chicken tenders at TGIF…
• When an Italian landlord says he’ll install 4 new air conditioners in your house before you move in, what that really means is “I will install four new air conditioners in your house eventually. When it’s cheapest for me. I’ll probably only hire two people to do it. I’ll wait till all your stuff is in the house before I do it, and we’ll make sure to do it on a weekend, so you’ll pretty much be stuck in your house. Oh, and don’t forget your $2200 rent next week.”

So, here I sit, a little after 9:00 pm now, on a Friday night in Rota, Spain, preparing for a court martial next week and eagerly anticipating the family’s arrival. Though my attention has been diverted a lot back to the states the past few weeks with some surgery mom had to endure, life here has largely been a welcome distraction.

God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good.

Everyone be safe back home, and I’ll do better about updates in the future in order to avoid these long posts.

-- pac

PS – I’d be remiss to not talk about Pooh. One night Melissa, Ella, and I were in the local Super Wal-Mart here, called Auchan. While we were there, I was looking in electronics (like usual), holding Ella, when a man walked near to me with a big stuffed Pooh bear in his hands. Now, Melissa and I haven’t really exposed Ella to Pooh, not necessarily intentionally, but just because Pooh stuff isn’t really our favorite stuff (even though I loved it as a kid). Well, let me tell you, when Ella saw that Pooh, she lit up like I’d never seen her light up, and haven’t seen her light up since. She squealed. I mean it! She literally squealed out loud and almost stole the man’s Pooh. Of course we had to get her one. Here’s the result.