There has been a trucker strike all week so we have been staying close to home since we could not buy petrol for the car.  Yesterday they finally got back to work and we were able to fill the tank.  This morning we drove into Lecce today and went shopping at Coin.  It's kind of like JC Penney in the US.  I snapped this picture in Lecce as we were walking around.

There isn't a whole lot to report.  It is January in southeast Italy and that means lots of wind, rain and cold.  It doesn't give us much incentive to go out and explore so we are concentrating our efforts on our work (in Susie's case it is volunteer work), Italian lessons and the house - getting pictures on the walls, etc.  The Volvo we ordered has arrived but we will not be able to drive it until the plates go through the Italian process.  It takes 2 to 3 weeks.  One advantage of the stormy weather is that it makes the sea look really cool - lots of high surf.  I'll attach a picture that Robert took.

One thing I didn’t realize when we moved to Brindisi, is that I as a UN spouse would be forced to retire. The UN employment rules require non-professional positions to go to Local Nationals. I have been having a hard time accepting it but I was told at a meeting with other UN spouses that they had a hard at the start but came to eventually accept it. The spouses that have not been able to accept retirement as a way of life, have moved back to their country of origin to work while their spouses work here. I guess the UN doesn’t believe in keeping families together. I keep hearing that they just don’t care. For an organization that does so much for Human Rights, it was hard for me to believe that they would treat the family unit as an expendable entity. It does make me sad but slowly, I am accepting my inability to work locally. Of course it doesn’t stop me from looking within Italy, I’m not ready to go home yet.

Our lives have changed dramatically since our last post in 2009. Robert landed a job with the United Nations and we were off on a new adventure. We spent the last 2 years living in Manhattan across from Central Park. As New York goes it was a great place to live.

We are, however, glad to have moved on to a place with a bit slower pace - sometimes maybe a bit too slow. :-) We moved recently to Southeast Italy and as beautiful as it is, we find it quite an adjustment. Mandie is with us at age 4 and is happy to be with us wherever we go, although she really liked all the attention she got in Central Park.

Previously, Robert wrote all the posts on this blog, but Susie is writing this and hoping to put some thoughts here of what it is like to live in Southern Italy as an expat - the good and the not so good.

Here's picture of Robert and I in Rome a few weeks ago.