General Update

Last week Fabri and I kept pretty busy.  We had 3 dinner parties at our house, went to one dinner at a friend's and I taught my class & worked at the museum 2 or 3 days.  Fabri was on call so he was working very long hours and had to work on the weekend.  Sunday we went to lunch at the Motta's house and then walked around a flea market in Racconigi.  The prices were way too high, but I did find one thing, a lime green piggy bank for 2 euros!  Soooo cute.  

I skipped ahead to Sunday, but I wanted to talk about Saturday too.  We had a fancy Melting Pot style dinner party with Fabri's cousins Gaetano & Giovanni, their significant others, Detta & Brunella & the baby Lulu.  We started with fondue with bread, apples, celery & cauliflower.  Then we had hot oil & hot broth to cook broccoli, beef, sausage, turkey, chicken, potatoes, cauliflower, and carrots in.  They do the oil (bourgionne) here often, but they had never tried the broth before and that went over really well.  In fact, everyone agreed next time we don't even need the oil.  So that's good and healthier.  

Fabri and I had some bad news yesterday.  I shipped all my stuff to Italy back in December.  The American company I chose was very friendly and helpful.  They responded instantly to emails and I felt comfortable handing my stuff to them.  Basically their Italian agent that accepted my stuff is horrible.  They are doing everything to draw this experience out and charging us more & more money every day.  First they never contacted me when my items arrived and they told us they didn't have to.  Then they sent us a bill which we did not understand and asked for some explanation and a reduction.  They never responded to any of my emails about that, but Fabri & I weren't in a huge rush because we were waiting for my items to clear customs.   They were supposed to contact us when my items cleared customs and of course they didn't, so we called several times yesterday and finally spoke to the right person who told us that they don't allow customs to begin their process until after we pay their bill!!  We're going to end up spending so much money and we're really upset that these people are such dubious assholes.  I wrote a strongly worded email to the American company I contracted with complaining about their Italian agents who are holding my items.  I reviewed the protocol that my company sent me and the Italian agent is doing anything how we were told they would.  I am waiting to get a response from them and am expecting it today.  Meanwhile Fabri contacted his friend who is a lawyer in Turin and after we get my stuff (on Monday hopefully) he's going to contact  the company and maybe we can recoup a little of our losses.  I'm not very optimistic about that, but it made Fabri feel better, so that's good.

Anyway, I'm trying not to think about the condition my stuff is in.  Just a few more days.  

Tomorrow I teach my third class.  I'm looking forward to it; I like the students.  Then we're having dinner with friends.  Fabri and I have been spending a lot more time with couples then his general group of friends.  I think that's a good & bad thing.  Fabri and I have never been over-drinking and clubbing people like a lot of his single friends.  The couples are more like us inviting people over for dinner or going to restaurants together.  It's a whole different life stage and we just have to make sure not to alienate Fabri's single friends.  We had a single girl dinner last Wednesday when 4 girlfriends came over for fajitas.  Next step is to have some boys over I guess.  Or more dating couples...  Whatever, these are the things we have to think about.  And of course how not to offend anyone.  Such is life. 

I think I've gotten to the random babbling stage of this post, so I'm going to sign off here.  Leave me comments or I will pout a lot!!