Day 3 - Being Talked At

First day of our class, which went by rather quickly. Briefs, turned in papers, got talked at, the usual. Part of getting housing here in Naples includes meeting with various "Landlord Reps," which involves being driven around the area from place to place looking at different apartments and homes. Most of them speak fairly good English, so it makes it easier when I can't think of random particular Italian words in a pinch! :) Called a few today, and will be going out on some visits very soon. I'm hoping to find something fairly nice, since we do have a good chunk of change to spend on our places. They warned us about one area, Lago di Patria, at which there was some "criminal activity" in the past year... some sort of immigrant-mafia encounter, but apparently since then it has been considered "safe." Thank heavens not "safe" enough, as the Housing office has you sign (among 10 other papers) that you rent there at your own risk and understand that Housing strongly advises against it. Who would rent there? How great could it REALLY be when you know there's been some type of "incident" that made the base CO strongly advise that people not move there? Seriously. Who's asking for that kind of trouble?... well, apparently people still do rent there... (**sarcastic eyeball-roll**)

Met another fellow LT, so I'll have someone to pal around with and go on housing visits. It's still a bit weird for me to ask people, "Hey, what's YOUR rank?" to figure out who I can and can't hang out with long-term... I'm pretty outgoing and like meeting everyone, but I still need to know who can be a good friend, or a once-in-a-while-acquaintance, so as to not worry about "fraternization"... ugh. So, we all end up skirting glances at each other's random paperwork to check out the "rank" box!

Nothing too exciting today, just bounced around the base, going to the commissary, exchange, and visiting the library (which will be closed for the next 20 days for carpet replacement). TWENTY DAYS. Granted, I understand books have to be moved, but TWENTY DAYS? Geez. K, I'm taking a deep breath. I already know everything here moves a BIT more slowly than the rest of the world... ;)