I dreamed last night that my friend Peter sent me a little kit to fill out for French citizenship. It was very easy, and I just sent it off. Then I found myself wandering with my family through the streets of an old city like Saluzzo. We were trying to make our way back down into the modern world, but we kept running into dead ends. Whenever we asked people for directions, they would tell us it was very far and we were going in the wrong direction. We ended up in front of a tiny house as Giorgio explained to us how he was going to make it into our house by adding three more floors.
We woke up in the morning and went across the street to a neighbor whom Carla said keeps cows. She said we could come by every morning for fresh raw milk. We love Italy. Her cows are beautiful. They are pure white with short, tidy, feminine horns, and huge brown eyes that look even larger by the contrast with their coats.
Yesterday when Tony went in to pick up a few documents we had left with Gianfranco by mistake, there was a large pile of papers on top of our binder, so it looks like Gianfranco is working hard. Tony was able to get his Permesso di Soggiorno application filled out and sent off too. It looks like other people are also starting to believe that it is possible for us to stay in Italy.
We almost feel that we can sit back and take a breath. Of course there is the confusion about my Permesso di Soggiorno, but there’s always something. We’ve gotten used to that by now. At least we’ve convinced a few people that we shouldn’t just go home and do it all at our consulate in the United States.
Anyway, there is one thing we’ve already attained. We don’t have to go “home” to our country of origin. We moved to Italy with nothing set up, and we didn’t speak a lick of Italian. Now we have a bank account, a codice fiscale (social security number), two rental contracts (well, that’s not such a good thing), and a decent command of Italian. We could do it anywhere. As we sat in Luigi’s office and he helped us write a letter to our landlord saying we were moving, I leafed through a book about interior design in Morocco. I idly considering moving there if for some reason we had to leave Italy and try again in three months. Why not? We could do it. I’ve even studied Arabic. I spent a week in Morocco once, and it is beautiful. We could learn a little French too.
We quite competently manage our business from here. We’ve figured out how to live here. We could do this anywhere in the world. And there are many places we could fly to and live cheaper, with less jet-lag, and enjoy more, than the United States. Nothing against my home country. The world is just full of wonderful places.