Some progress at last

Yet another week’s gone by and here’s a new attempt to add something to my blog. The internet connection problems are driving me mad, but until we’ve moved into our new home and the ADSL connection has been installed, I’m afraid there’s little we can do.

Regarding the works, the floor heating’s finished and we’re waiting for the topping in terracotta. This has been deferred by a week so once more we’re suffering some delay. Unfortunate, but so be it. We’re feeling so happy here that this small stroke of bad luck doesn’t affect us in the least.

Last time, I already told you about Nezio’s final bill. Well, we’ve just reduced it by another €500,-. For more than two months, Nezio totally neglected to deconstruct the scaffolding against the façade of our house. Probably he thought that he could cause us some more trouble this way. Well, yesterday we’ve done it ourselves. It was a couple of hours of hard work but we managed. So that’s yet another part of Nezio’s bill we’re no longer going to pay for. All parts of the scaffolding have been placed very neatly on the side, where they’re out of the way. Even if it takes years before Nezio’ll show up to collect them, we won’t lose our sleep over it anymore. So here’s a picture of our house the way it is now. What do you think?

In the mean time I’ve also been quite busy to find a (part-time) job so I can earn a bit of money on the side. Christine and I’ve been going about, asking some of the local merchants whether they’d mind if we’d put some advertisement posters in their shops. I’ve made one for private piano classes and one for English lessons. Both were regarded as very welcome by the people who were around, although I haven’t received any phonecall yet for further inquiries. What’s more, I went to the town hall of Castelnovo ne’ Monti, the small city in the heart of our region. I offered my services as an English teacher and asked whether we could not organize something to the benefit of the local community. The lady who’s responsible for education was very happy with my initiative indeed and she’s going to discuss it with the rest of the council. She assured me that she’d let me know as soon as possible. I’m really looking forward to this! Even if it’s for perhaps only 2 evenings per week.

And for the rest… The weather’s just fabulous and we truly feel at home in this absolutely magnificent country. On Wednesday and Thursday we’ve had some rain and also today it’s a bit cloudy. But even when the weather’s not so nice, the views you get around here are stunning, wouldn’t you agree?