Canada Born-Alaska Grown-On The Road

 2 WEEKS IN! Brain Dump! Winter arrived after day 1. It has been nonstop rain and Vesuvius has snow! But locals say "winter lasts two weeks" and there's more of this sunshine in the forecast. We arrived two weeks ago today! Although it feels cliche, I both feel like we just arrived and that this new life is just the way it has always been! In fact much the last two weeks has felt like a litany of opposites.  Italian    /    English Just arrived    /    Feels normal Extravert    /    Introvert House Hunting    /    House Showings Overwhelmed    /    Underwhelmed This is going to be really hard    /    This is totally THE life Necessary Paperwork    /    Bureaucratic BS complete freedom    /    technical captivity Reality    /    Expectations Picked a lemon and an orange from Brian's colleagues' front ...

 Ciao dall'italia! We have been in Italy for 1.5 weeks! Most importantly, all three of us arrived safely! Many of our military friends joked, harassed, and barbed us about taking the rotator to Naples. They had cynical comments in person, laughing emojis on social media, and a lot of "good luck" - all made with love and in jest and yet we knew that something must be up! Taking the rotator was the only option for us, we wouldn't have driven, literally, across the entire country had there been a different option. The intro to our rotator experience: "please begin your check in process up to 5hours prior to departure." I'M SORRY, WHAT?! I honestly thought it was a misprint. We could have cut a lot of that time down by checking our bags the day before, so we repacked and carefully laid out all the paperwork and Olaf necessary things for our departure day, caught an Uber to the AMC Terminal on Norfolk Naval Base - four checked bags and a kennel in tow - and w...

We knew that getting Olaf to join us in Italy was going to be a challenge. Like the type A people we are, we started researching our options early in this 7 month saga. They were limited. Helping Brian make sure his toy got packed "Sorry, your bulldog can't fly on a commercial flight due to his short nose breed." "Sorry, there are no military flights for dogs out of Eielson." "Sorry, the pet cruise doesn't leave at that time of year." "Sorry, our company doesn't have drivers in Alaska." Last vet visit...little did he know how much car time was coming! Turns out that Olaf dogs, and other brachycephalic breeds, can't fly commercial but they can fly on military flights. Commercial airlines are worried about the bad PR if a dog dies in flight but turns out the military is far less concerned with PR, and while I say that with a tone of sarcasm, we are grateful that is the case. So after deciphering yet more military jargon we learned t...