HANNAH SHARES

We officially arrived in Italy! A few updates first…

In October we found out we are expecting Baby Shares this June! We are so excited to start a family and are expecting an extra special adventure doing so in Europe. I am 19 weeks today and we are looking forward to my first appointment at the Italian hospital (including the anatomy scan!) hopefully next week.

At the beginning of December we packed up our house in Georgia and crossed our fingers that we would see everything on the other side, which can take anywhere between two and three months. We said goodbye to our short-lived life in the South a few days later and spent the next month with family and friends in the Midwest. We were even lucky enough to have a small family baby shower in Chicago a few days before we left to celebrate Baby Shares.

A few days before leaving the US there was a LOT to think about as the pandemic added extra challenges to our move. We were required to have negative PCR COVID tests before boarding our flight in Atlanta that were within 72 hours of our arrival in Europe. Fortunately we both tested negative. After a quick stop in Amsterdam (literally, we were RUNNING through the airport in order to not miss our flight) we arrived in Venice the morning of January 8th. Our luggage did not. Because of a delayed first flight, our luggage didn’t make the quick connection. All ten (yes, ten) bags would be on the next flight to Venice late that evening.

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Upon arrival in Venice we were required to quarantine for 14 days. We took an Army-sponsored shuttle from Venice to the base in Vicenza (about an hour drive) where we checked-in and were escorted to our “quarantine house” on base. We had been communicating with a sponsor (an officer from Michael’s new unit here) and were fortunate to have everything we would need already in our house when we arrived. Luckily we both packed necessities in our carry-on luggage at the last minute, so we had clothes and such to get us by until our luggage arrived. All of our luggage showed up on our door step the next day, thankfully!

As I’m writing this, today is day 11 of quarantine and we are looking forward to moving to the on-post hotel this coming Saturday. There is very little on-base housing in Vicenza, so almost everyone lives off-post in private housing, which we are excited about! Because of the way housing works here, the Army will cover a 60-day hotel stay at the on-base hotel while we figure out where we are going to live. We have already contacted a highly-recommended realtor in the area and are looking at apartments listed online in the downtown area where we would like to live. The Army has a great housing team here that will help us through contracts and negotiations once we find a place, so the process can take quite a while. Hopefully by the time we find an apartment our furniture and belongings will be here so we can move in! We also shipped my car over, which is currently on its way to Vicenza from Germany, so we should see it any day now.

Michael started virtual in-processing right away when we arrived and that takes up most of his days. We’ve spent the rest of the time watching everything on Netflix while researching the area we are going to call home for the next few years and figuring out all of the places we want to travel once it is safe to do so.

Italy is still fairly locked-down with the pandemic. Each region is color-coded (white, yellow, orange, and red, with red being the worst). Vicenza is currently orange, and likely will be through at least the beginning of March. This means no indoor dining, no leaving the region where you live, evening curfews, and masks enforced any time you step outside your home. While it’s not the ideal time to explore a new city, once our quarantine is over we are excited to get out for walks during the day and get takeaway pizza and gelato!

My hope for this site is to document our experience living abroad mostly so we don’t forget any details and we have a place to look back on our adventures. I hope it will also be a place our family and friends come to see what we are up to and a way we can stay connected with them. We’ll see where this goes! If you’re still reading, I’d love for you to leave a comment for us to see who is here!

xx Hannah