Apartment Update

Hello again.

We wired our first month's rent to the rental agency in Florence. So, basically, we have an apartment now. We have yet to sign a lease, but hope to do so soon, as we need a signed lease in order to get our visas. Our lease is for ten months. Let's hope we don't run out of money before then. HA!

We have found out that after one turns in the appropriate documents to the Italian Consulate, it generally takes two weeks or less to have the visas in hand. That's encouraging. The documents that we have left to acquire are as follows:

Financial statements/Bank statements,
A personal affidavit from my mom (sort of like a vouch),
Proof of Italian insurance coverage,
&
Letters explaining why we chose Italy and what we plan to do there.

That list doesn't seem so overwhelming, and that excites us.

Another interesting development is that I recently found out from Lou and her parents, that Lou's great, great grandfather came to America from Italy in the early 1900s. This means that it potentially much easier for us to acquire Italian citizenship because Lou will be, technically, "reclaiming" citizenship as opposed to acquiring for no reason. So, once we get there, we're definitely going to try for that. An Italian citizen is a European Union citizen. This means, if we acquire citizenship we will be allowed to live, travel, and work in 28 countries including the U.S. That sounds pretty sweet to us.