Settling In.

In the days following our arrival we hustled to get ourselves squared away in our new place. One of our "Italian" cell phones the oldest, had been deactivated due to lack of use, and we had to buy a new SIM card and phone number for it; the nice man at the shop in Camaiore walked us through it. We some basic food shopping at the Conad, a smallish grocery store in town (one of the few businesses that remains open during the "pausa" in the afternoon) and stocked up on anti-bug provisions: plug-in repellants and sprays.
The grocery stores here, especially the big "Esselunga" market in the next town, look similar to their American counterparts. Notably, the checkout clerks sit rather than stand at their stations, and all bagging is left to the customers. If you use a shopping cart you must surrender a one euro coin to a receiver on the cart, which you can only retrieve after you surrender the cart back to the rack - not a bad idea.

We contacted Gabriella, my second cousin and our original point of connection with the family in Lucca. She has recently retired from her job teaching English in a secondary school, much to her happiness, and apparently has has obtained a more joyous outlook on life and slimmed down quite a bit as well. We has a drink with her in the early evening in Lucca, at a bar in the Piazzale Napoleone. She passed on what she knew about the members on the local family and we began to make plans for a family picnic on the ninth of September.

The next we contacted my mother's first cousin Luanna and were invited over for drinks, and this evolved into dinner, and a rather late night talking and hanging out with the family - Luanna, her daughter Isabella, son-in-law Lucciano and their two daughters, Claudia, about 12, Frederica, about 9. Isabella can speak a little English, in a pinch, but this was essentially an all-Italian night. Nancy and I were doing much better than we ever had before, in terms of following the conversation and making appropriate contributions, but we are agreed that this family speaks very fast and are the greatest challenge for us. Towards the end of the night the girls had us attempting to translate some of their favorite American boy bands songs, and Lucciano had me fully engaged in a discourse on the the recent italian World Cup Victory over the French.