Wandering Browns

This is our living room! Now with furniture! After living with virtually nothing in the way of furniture for 5 days, our living room furniture set we bought was delivered! Now at least we have 1 comfy place to sit in our house. Living in a town house with just the things Austin was able to squeeze in the car has been... interesting. It's kind of hilarious some of the things I forgot to put on the list of things for Austin to bring, including... Measuring cups... Austin brought all of our baking materials and dry goods as far as food goes, but no measuring cups or spoons. I'm getting pretty good at estimating :) The mixer attachments for the Bosch mixer. I have the blender and the mixing bowl, but none of the attachments to actually mix anything in the mixer. Bummer. Can Opener- this might be the worst. Thinking about all the food options that we like to have around the house, and the dinner options that I like to make, it was interesting to find that many of them requi...

So this post is dedicated to all the weird little things that are very different between Italy and the U.S.: -           Italians love to sweep, mop, and iron. If we were out and about amongst shops in the morning, everyone would be outside sweeping their front step. If we were passing by residential communities, ladies would be sweeping, or mopping, or ironing. Rosa insisted on ironing all of our clothes (even Austin’s T-shirts and jeans!) because they were a little wrinkly.   Italians like old things, and doing things the same way they have been done forever. Instead of ripping down old buildings to build new ones like in America, Italians keep the pre-existing buildings and fit them for whatever use they need. For example, in the old part of the city in Bergamo, there were several shop spaces that were “under construction”. Austin says that they can stay under construction for a very long time. I can see why after se...

We signed our lease to move into a townhome a few days ago. Austin left almost immediately to retrieve some of our things from Utah; the relocation company is not able to get the rest of our stuff out to us until at least the 16th of June. Even so, I'm pretty excited that we have a place to live and that soon, we will have at least the necessities to live with, even though we won't have any furniture for awhile... Thus the emptiness of the place. I will have to post "after" pictures when we get our furniture and our baby stuff too... Here it is! One half of kitchen other kitchen half Our little boy's bedroom... probably going to do bright blue accents with the yellow Outside in front of house (but in back of where the driveway area is) Front of the 4-plex with our attached garage Living room with our red wall Our huge bedroom... we are painting the 2 purple walls a different color View outside of our bedroom window We ha...

We arrived in Genova after 10:00 pm due to our train being delayed. There were a lot of unhappy people, including the conductor, but that was because this old Italian woman kept following him around and yelling at him. By the 3 rd time she had confronted him, he threw his bag, and cussed her out. The funny thing was, (Austin told me because I don’t speak Italian), was that he was still using the formal version of “you” (more respectful for older people) whilst he was cussing her out. Train stations in general are not generally the best places to be late at night, and are not in the best parts of town, so Austin takes off to find our B&B. Well, I made him take the directions out and I carried them and tried to keep him on the right path since he was going so fast. We stuck to lighted, main streets, and even ran into two prostitutes on the corner outside the place we were staying! We were very happy when we got there, but kind of unhappy about news we received about our relocation...

I felt worse for Rosa after our late night when I woke up early the next morning to go to the bathroom and she was up and about already ironing our clothes that she had hung out to dry the day before. We tried to explain to her that we were rolling them up into little balls and stuffing them into our backpacks, but she still wanted to do it, so we let her. We woke up relatively early because we wanted to go to the market to buy souvenirs before leaving San Remo for Monaco. We went to the market, but ended up only finding things for our baby. Oh well. We bought an adorable short and t-shirt outfit that says “I want to try that wave” with sea things on it, as well as a T-shirt that our kid will not be able to wear for a couple years, but it was the smallest size and says “Italia” on it with a little flag. Hopefully we will be able to find suitable souvenirs for everyone else in Genova. The market was fairly big, with an indoor section that had fruit, vegetables, meat, pasta, pesto, and...

We slept in Monday because we were super tired from the late nights the past couple nights. When we finally decided to get up for the day, Rosa made us really good hot chocolate for me, and orzo for Austin (a hot barley drink that members drink instead of coffee). I think it tastes like burnt toast. We talked with Rosa for awhile, and she told us about her conversion story, as well as her experiences serving temple missions at the Bern, Switzerland temple. She also told us about one of her great-grandsons that was born with several problems, but through a series of miracles has survived and is doing well now. She reminds us SO MUCH of Austin’s grandma. Her husband passed many years ago, and she loves to cook and clean and take care of people. And she loves Austin. Austin called her “Santa Rosa” the whole time we were in San Remo, because she really is a saint. She helped us start laundry and told us to go out in the morning and she would take care of the rest. We finally got going ar...

We arrived in San Remo and were immediately enveloped in friendly arms of so many that Austin knew while on his mission here. He served here 8 months, so he made many friends. One of the families called Austin last week to set up dinner for the night we arrived, so his son, Mirko, picked us up at the train station and took us to Rosa’s house, the place we are staying while we are here. When we got to Rosa’s house, there were 2 other women there with Rosa to welcome us. I forget their names, but they live so far away that they can’t get to church in the morning with the public transport available, so they stay with Rosa Saturday nights and go to church in the morning with her. Due to this arrangement, Rosa put us up in her bedroom, the 2 other ladies in her bedroom upstairs, and Rosa slept on her own couch! She is a saint, and has tried to do everything possible to make our lives pleasant while we are here. The tunnel to the trains  After cleaning up a little and setti...