Pine Street

Here are some pictures of our new apartment. We are slowly getting furniture and putting up pictures and it's looking good.
Ben's enjoying his work and I'm still looking for opportunities.
We are really thankful for our new friends and all the things God has given us.

A New Hometown

It's been quite a summer! After returning to the states, we travelled around staying with family and friends in New York, Virginia, Tennessee and Mississippi. Ben started searching for a job as soon as we returned, but when nothing really promising was happening and we had lived with other people long enough, we decided to find our own place somewhere. And it turned out that we found a great sublet in Philadelphia for this month. Within a week of moving there, Ben was offered a position at CDW, an IT company, here in Philly and he accepted it! So, here we are in Philly.

Philly is a nice city and it's close to DC and New York. We've already met some lovely people from church here. Ben starts his new job on the 17th as an account manager to medium and large businesses, selling IT solutions. We are so grateful for this job. I don't know what I will do here, but I've taken some dance and yoga classes already.

I turned 27 this past weekend, and we went to NYC to celebrate my birthday and Ben's new job. It was so fun seeing everyone and going to see Mary Poppins on broadway.

As of now, we are looking for apartments and getting our stuff out of storage in Memphis (very excited to see all our stuff again.) We wish you all a great fall, what a wonderful time of year!

We're back!

We are back in the USA!
Our trip home was full of disasters. We got stuck in London for a day and a night and then when we finally arrived at JFK, none of our bags had made it. Thankfully, the cat had flown by himself the day before we left and arrived safely.
We stayed with our gracious friends Daniel and Amy in NYC and were just estatic about being back in New York. It really is the best city ever and so nice to do familiar things, like go to the deli and get egg and a bagel and coffee, speak english, and run into people on the streets. We waited for our bags to make it while we hung out with friends and walked around the city. Some of our bags were delivered, and then we ended up hunting down the rest at the airport.

When Ben found them, we left for Virginia to stay with my famliy. So that's where we are now and it's great. The grocery stores and tv channels here are so overwhelming to us in the amount of choices. Everything is so much easier here than in Italy and nice and convienient.

Next stop, Tennessee, to see Ben's family and go to the lakehouse.
Oh, and we got new cell phone numbers too

646-306-0902, Melissa
646-306-0913, Ben

New Blog

Welcome to the the new blog. I transferred all the old blogs to this site, but haven't got the pictures on yet.

Well, the countdown continues until we return to the states. Ben is doing a crazy amount of projects for his final week of classes next week. And then he has a week of finals. I am going a little crazy, with having nothing to really do and wanting to be home, but it's alright. I know I should savor times when I can relax.

Luckily I have Kato, our cat, to keep me company while I am here alone. Ben and I are so glad we decided to bring him. He's so fun and sweet to us. Yes, I know that most of you reading this don't agree, but we really love him and are grateful for him. Kato has a new friend/enemy (sorry Chloe) named Giga. She's the neighbor's cat and comes over to Kato's balcony so they can stare at each other and sometimes cry and hiss. And while Kato is a giant beast compared to Giga, she is nimble, and Kato is not, so we're not sure who would dominate in a fight. But we're not about to find out and we try to keep them apart.

Ben has a friend at school, Silas (from Kenya) who owns a fish business. We got some of his mussels and tuna when my mom was here and it was awesome. Ben had the idea to have a fish/sushi party for his classmates. So last night we had this big party at one of the professors apartment's. Ben and I made sushi with fresh tuna and Silas and his wife made unbelievable scallops, shrimp, mussels, whole fish (which i now now how to cook, eyes and all), smoked salmon and fresh salmon and tuna. The food was amazing, but it was a lot of work. Everyone had a great time.

Another event coming up is the glorious 30th birthday of Ben! Yay! June 25th!

I can't tell you how excited I am to see friends and family in 2 and a half weeks.

A visit from mom

May 31, 2007

Our travels continued when my mom and Walter, her husband, came to visit last week. We spent 2 days in Milan and then went to Cinque Terre, a group of towns on the Mediterranean. It was really beautiful there and we had such a fun time exploring all the little towns and eating really good food. We even hiked from one town to another and loved seeing the ocean and the cliffs. After that, we went to Bellagio on Lake Como. It rained a lot while we were there, but our stay at Hotel Belvedere was wonderful. It is so fun to share our Italian life with friends and family from home. My mom and Walter really got to see what it was like to be here and deal with the quirky Italian ways. And as with all our visitors, Ben and I are so grateful that they came to see us, it really makes us happy.

Now, we have one month left of being here and are deciding what are next steps will be. Hopefully, we will be coming through New York, Washington, and Memphis/Pickwick during July while Ben continues to look for a job. I have realized in the last month that Milan has become a home for us, even though it's not the best. And while, i don't think i'll be very sad to leave it, we've made a life for ourselves here and I feel proud that we've accomplished that. This next transition to wherever we end up seems even scarier than the one we made moving here. But we're praying that the next place we move is full of friends and opportunity for both of us.

Ben is very busy right now with school and I am not doing much. There's always possible performances for me, but one never knows with this group. Happy June to Everyone.

I love Paris in the Springtime?

May 21, 2007

Paris Trip: May 16-19, 2007

High Points: Riding bikes through the city, Wandering through St. Germain, St. Michel and Monmartre, Yummy Coffees, French Onion Soup, Crepes, Sunny afternoon in the Luxembourg Gardens, Watching Spiderman 3 in English, Stores on the Champs Elysee, Seeing famous art at the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay.

Low Points: Freezing Temps, Constant Rain, Disgusting Hotel in shady area, Overcrowded sights like Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur and Versailles, the very long bus rides to and from both airports.

Odd Points: The sun didn't set until after 10pm, we heard more americans speaking english than we'd heard all year and food and drinks are way more expensive in Paris than in Milan. We also saw men dressed as strawberries, a lot of steller mullets, Santa, in disguise walking through Versailles, and kids giving away free hugs under the Eiffel Tower.

French it Up!

May 14, 2007

I know it's been a long time since our last blog, but there wasn't anything really exciting to report. Ben's been working hard at school and we've been hanging out with friends. My dance company has been wishy washy about things, but I have a show tomorrow with them and maybe one in early June.
We went to Southern France this past weekend, be the real fun began the day before, when Ben was given free tickets to Beyonce's concert here in Milan. It turns out his school gave Beyonce on honorary masters. Why?? We don't know, but her dad came to ben's school to talk to the students and gave them all free tickets. The show was great and it was fun to go with all of Ben's classmates.

So, the next day we rented a car and drove to France. We stopped by San Remo for a little while and then got really lost. There were a lot of tolls and 124 (we counted) tunnels between Milan and Nice. But we finally got to our bed and breakfast in a town called Ventabrens, outside of Aix-en-Provence. It was a beautiful house and the hosts were really friendly and helpful. We went in to Aix for dinner and had an elaborate meal. The weird part about the town was that, walking down the street, there were so many americans speaking english. We guessed that since it has a big university there, they were studying abroad or something.

The next day we drove to the Luberon Valley and to a town called Gordes. This town is really spectacular and unique. It is built into a giant rock and the buildings are the same color as the rock. It was really pretty and overlooked the whole valley with vineyards, lavender fields, poppy fields and more. This land was really amazing and we were blown away by the beauty. We then drove to Rousillion, which is a town that is built on these bright red and yellow rocks. A lot of pigment for paints are harvested from these rocks.

After that we decided to take the scenic route to our next town which was Nice. That turned out to be a bad idea, as it took us through the French Alps and took forever. The drive was really fantastic, scenery-wise, but it was very tiresome.
We got to Nice and had a great dinner on these picnic tables in a little square. I had Moules Frites (mussels and fries) and a local dish called socca which is chickpea flour and olive oil tortillas. Nice also has a lot of tourists, but it was still fun because the night life is really exciting.

The next day we spent on the beach, which is so beautiful. It has no sand, just rocks, which is pretty uncomfortable. And there were a lot of topless ladies! The water is so blue and clear and wasn't that cold for so early in the year.

All in all, it was great. We really liked Provence and the Riviera and they are places we hope to come back to. We could really tell a change when we got into France. It felt less hectic, more calm and relaxed. Apparently, France and Italy have the same population, but 
France has double the land. I am really glad we got to see the country side and get a good rest from the cities.

Up next, we go to Paris. Au revoir!