McDonalds

So today we enjoyed a piece of the US and ate at McDonald's. Pretty much the same here as there except I had to pay for my ketchup and the drinks had no ice. The McDonald's we went to is in the mall here. It never ceases to amaze me how busy it is every time we go there. I guess Italians do like fast food after all and aren't all about an hour long meal. I also had to resolve a bank issue today. They did not pay our rent last week like they were supposed to. Come to find out they try to debit the account the day before the payment is due. I did not deposit the money for the rent until that afternoon so that is why they did not pay the rent. So, now I know how things work. I also found out that we don't want to try and transfer money each month from our bank account in the States into that account. There is a 10 euro fee per transaction for doing so. I guess we will just stick to the allotment out of Jeff's pay check each month into that account to pay the rent and utilities. Now that we know it should make things easier. What bothers me the most is this is an Italian bank with a branch on post for the military and 90% of the military bank there. However, none of the contracts are translated in English and the one teller who set up our account knew very little English or otherwise the rent probably would have been paid with no problem. Today I had a very kind gentleman helping me who took plenty of time to answer all my questions and I left there happy and not ready to change banks. Nothing beats good customer service.

Next we headed to the Thrift Store to shop for jeans for Madison for school. The clothing selection at the PX is limited and I hate to pay full price for things so the Thrift Store is a great option. So far I have found her 2 pair of pants, a skirt and a really nice winter coat that will have to wait until next winter because it is too big for this year. It is brand new and only cost me $4 so I could not resist.

An inconvenience of Italy that I have found is the fact that very few stores or websites from the States will ship to an APO address. I was trying to shop for some household items the other day and found some things I really wanted, but no one would ship to us. This means I now have to go out on the economy and try to find comparable items. I might have to start stopping at different stores and just walking in to see what kinds of items they sell as the outside appearances and names don't provide many clues.

To help the kids learn Italian I bought them each a Disney movie today in Italian. I bought two they know really well to help them make the association with the words. With that being said, Madison just tried to put one of the movies into the player and it won't play because it says it is the wrong Regional disk. I guess I will have to do some research to figure out how to fix the problem. I am really not in the mood to deal with this right now. I just want to take a nap to be honest. I need to go down into the garage and pull out the pieces of our Rubbermaid shed we had in AZ. I have it for sale and someone is coming over tonight to look at it and possibly buy it. We don't have a space large enough in our yard for it and it takes up a ton of space in the garage so I would really like it to be gone. Right now I have 4 different people that want to buy it. The lack of storage space around here makes a great market place to sale the shed. Thank goodness. My goal is to take 10 items a week to the Thrift Store to sell so we can clean some of this stuff out of the house and make more room.

By this weekend I hope to post some pictures from around Italy to include Venice and Verona. Check back for more info.