We Have Visitors!

It's official. My mother and her husband Jim have purchased their tickets and will be visiting us for around two weeks in December! They arrive in the middle of the month and will be with us for Christmas. Amy and I hope this is just the first of many people who visit us in Italy.

Passport Photos

Yesterday Amy and I took care of another of the annoying pieces for our trip. Amy's driver's license was set to expire a few days before we left and mine was to expire in November. Both of us needed new picture so renewal by mail was not possible. Fortunately, we can renew up to a year before our license expires so yesterday we took care of that. While we were out and about we also had 14 passport pictures made for each of us. We need two each for our visas and were asked to bring a dozen each to Italy. Apparently we paper the city with them upon arrival. Unfortunatley, there is no discount for buying in bulk, even at Costco!

While I am on the subject, if you want to visit us you are going to need a valild passport. Don't wait until the last minute to apply.

Travel Plans

As crazy as it might sound, people are already beginning to make plans to visit and we are really excited about that! Once the SYA school schedule is set for next year we will let people know what it is. That probably won't happen until late May at the earliest. They like to get through this year before they focus too much on next year. Before that, if you want to get an idea, the schedule for the current year is available at the sya.it site linked to the right.

Some things to consider for your planning. International flights are expensive and only going to go higher over the next year. You can thank a weak dollar (the US is printing money as if it was paper) and soaring energy costs (thanks speculators). However, airlines will typically let you book only 11 months or so in advance. You can currently book into mid/late March. You will have to wait until later to book if you want to visit us after that. We had to book our return flight for March which we will have to change. Be VERY careful doing something like that. Switching tickets now costs $150-250 per ticket to change international tickets. For us it turns out to still be less expensive to pay the switching costs, perhaps twice if we stay a second year, versus purchasing a one way ticket now and a second one way ticket when we finally know what our return date will be.

If you don't care what airline you fly, we have had reasonable success going to one of the travel search engines (Expedia seems to work for us) and putting in our search parameters. There is usually somebody having a sale. You can then visit the site for that specific airline to see if there might be even better deals to be had. One advantage to doing it that way is that the airline specific site will often let you look at dates around the date you are interested in if you have some flexibility. Travel search engines rarely allow you to do that easily. Finally, with ticket prices that expensive it makes sense to look into travel insurance if you think there might be any need to switch/cancel your flights in the future.

See you in December Mom!

Car Talks

After an early morning/early afternoon (US/Italy) phone conversation, we have agreed to purchase the rotating site car, a 1998 Opal Astra Wagon. It is passed (bought/sold) from one of the US-based teachers to another every year or two. It is small enough to maneuver on the narrow streets within the historic city walls where we will live, but still large enough for 4-5 people with luggage for an airport run. The headaches involved with registering it, arranging for insurance, etc. now await although much of that has to be dealt with once we are on the ground in Viterbo.

Continued Preparations

Progress comes little by little. For those of you interested in more information about the program, I have added a link to the umbrella website for all of the SYA locations and also a link to the SYA Italy site. Feel free to look around to get more of a sense of what SYA is and to see some of the particulars about the site in Viterbo.

The math courses at all of the SYA sites are taught from a set curriculum so there is little for me to do to prepare. Amy, on the other hand, has had an inventory made of the available books and chosen her texts for her courses next year. This will be her first year of teaching AP courses. The syllabus for that is fixed and the issue is more one of planning how to cover the lines than in choosing material. The course for students who are beyond AP allows more freedom and flexibility but at a cost of more preparation.

The director in Italy is in the process of completing the paperwork for his portion of our visa. For a vacationing visitor from the US, no visa is necessary. You only need to arrive with a valid passport which won't expire too soon. The process to stay for more than 90 days and to work during that time is more complex. Right now they are working on the nulla osta, translated roughly as no obstacle. It is basically exactly what the name implies. It is the local authorities verifying for the consulate here that there is no obstacle to our coming to Italy to work. We aren't taking a position which could be held by an Italian and we won't be a drag on the resources of the state. We have a place to live provided by our employer and sufficient insurance so that we can participate in the medical system. We need to have the nulla osta with us when we present ourselves for our visa. The local authorities should issue that by the end of April and we will have it shortly after that.

The Adventure Begins

For several years now we have been working toward a goal of traveling to Italy as part of a sabbatical for Warren and leave of absence for Amy. This Spring our dream came true as we accepted positions teaching at the School Year Abroad site in Viterbo, Italy, a small city of 60K people about an hour and a half bus/train ride north of Rome. This blog is intended to chronicle our trip for our friends and relatives.

At this point we have made substantial progress in our preparations. We have secured our leaves, found caretakers for our house and cats, arranged for Diesel to stay with the Santiago family and purchased our airline tickets. We are working on the purchase of a car and bicycles for use while we are in Italy. All that remains of the planning is to arrange for our visas. We can't schedule our appointments at the Italian Consulate in Boston until we are within 90 days of our intended departure so we will be waiting until mid-May to do that based on a departure date of 16 August.

During the run up to our departure we will be updating periodically whenever anything of import happens.  Bookmark now and prepare to enjoy la dolce vita with us.