Welcome to Sigonella!

This is the view from our front yard.  That's Mt. Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe.  No worries, though, no big eruptions.  We've been told that it erupts a little bit all through the year.  We've seen smoke coming from the top a few different times already.  Most of the time there are a lot of clouds covering the top of the mountain.  

This little car is what the Ray family got around in the first three weeks we were here.  Our sponsor (someone assigned from Jason's command to help us get settled in) was super generous and let us use it.    It's really only supposed to seat four, but we made it work.  Our van should be here in a couple more weeks.  We bought a '99 Audi from someone a couple weeks ago, so that made life a whole lot easier.  

Here's another view from our front yard.  Lots and lots of townhouses just like ours.  

Lucy had to get a physical to be able to join the swim team.  She mentioned to the doctor that her ears had been bugging her.  After taking a look inside, she turned to Jason and asked, "Have you been to the beach lately?"  Jason thought she met since we had arrived in Italy, so he said no.  She went on to tell him that Lucy's ears had a lot of sand in them.  He laughed and explained how we had spent the previous month in San Diego, which included hours at the beach every day.  She had to have her ears "irrigated" to get all the sand out.  

One of our first outings out in town was to the nearest Leroy Merlin store.  It's the Italian version of Home Depot.  We decided to paint a couple walls in our house and we were told this was the place to go.  The drive was supposed to be 20 minutes......it took us an hour and a half.  We got very confused and very frustrated, but, there were no harsh words or not one cuss word was uttered.  

We all thought the shopping carts were pretty cool.  

Graham wanted a picture of his foot being run over.

We also made it to the mall, Porte di Catania.  The escalators were the highlight and the pizza was a disappointment, but we decided not to base our opinion of Italian pizza on a few slices we got from the mall.