Last week was an epic week for me. We moved two children back home from college and one daughter to her new apartment. Lots of moving! Then we took our youngest daughter to the airport off to Italy. You know how the best laid plans can go awry? We made plans to communicate with our daughter in Italy with her laptop and a program called Skype. We tried it out at home and it was very easy and fun to use. We could talk and see each other with the video camera, all for free. When she got to Italy and the hotel where she will be staying, she discovered she could not get online. Her roommate has the same computer as she has and her laptop could get online. So I talked to her for a few minutes only. Now apparently no one is able to get the internet connections to work. So the next thing I had to do was upgrade her cell phone to international plan. It is free for me to call her but she has to pay 99 cents/minute to call me. She got a phone card also. But the timing will be the problem. Perhaps they will get the internet connection problems figured out soon. Anyway she is having a wonderful time. She also informed me that the wine is very good there. Hmmm....now my son is jealous because he likes red wine with a meal. Maybe she can bring him back a bottle. She is only 20? There are older people with her though. She also told me they have to walk up this huge hill to their hotel every day when coming back from the town. It is beautiful there and she said she will be getting plenty of exercise.
Last week I also had internet problems of my own. We finally got it fixed after spending several hours on the phone with internet support from India. That was fun! :( It turned out that my phone line was broken across the street and rubbing on and off and finally completely broke. It was fixed on Saturday. Such a little thing, but a lot of effort.
I have missed reading a lot of posts last week, maybe I can catch up soon. I need to get caught up this week on my work at home and the office too. I kept my oldest daughter's dog (Apple) this week-end and she kept me busy. She's a real sweety but I'm not used to keeping a dog in the house. Our yard is not completely fenced in so I had to take her out on the leash to potty.
I am going to make some curtains with appliques on them for my daughter's bedroom window. And some pillows for her bed too. I really will like getting my sewing machine back out. I just need to get some of the clutter and extra furniture from kid's moving situated so I can reach my machine. I love to sew.
I received two new Blythe's in the mail recently. I will take pictures soon. One has very long brown hair and the other long red hair. I may sew them some clothes too while I have the sewing mood going. I really should get back to quilting. Perhaps I will be inspired. I wish I could knit better. I find it hard to follow a pattern.
We had some heavy rain the past three nights. Every thing is growing well including the weeds in our yard. My son took scuba lessons this week-end and got his license. He wants me to get mine too. I guess I will attempt. It would be fun on a vacation to do that. I am looking at vacation homes to rent for a week on the east coast of either North Carolina or South Carolina. I want a beach house right on the ocean front. Anyone have any suggestions about a beach that they have been to? I have been looking at Wilmington, NC or Myrtle beach.
9 comments:
Yeah, phone costs to & from Italy can be killer. The best system we came up with was that I got a phone over there and would call home whenever I wanted to talk to my family. If it was a good time, we would hang up within a few minutes, and they would call me back. My mom found a phone card (at the grocery store or Walmart I think) that was about 5 cents a minute, and I received calls for free. It was kind of weird always making two calls, but it worked out ok. Good luck keeping in touch with her! =)
When my daughter was in Croatia, they gave her a cell phone and I bought minutes with a phone card I bought online. Still I had to call her for it to be cheap. So we had a few times when I would call her back. We could talk with computers on msn messenger though. And for some reason text messages were only 10cents a minute.
Temp just dropped here and now it is raining...sigh!
OK, I've heard good things about Myrtle Beach, but I've never been myself. I would love to!
Have a great day!☺
My My My! You've had a lot going on!!! Our middle daughter is going to Malaysia in July and we've got to figure that stuff out. Yikes.
So your daughter is in Italy now ! Concerning phone calls, Skype would work very nice from Europe to the States because I use it from Belgium to call my friends in the States. It is very cheap, for 30 min I payed not even 1 € if I remember well. But it also seemed to me that Internet is a problem in Italy in general because last year when I was there to visit family and friends I had a lot of troubles to get online and thought it would be the mountains around. But I didn't have that in Egypt or even in Turkey. It was soooo slow to load or it didn't work at all. It also costs quite a lot for an hour I had to pay 5 €. In Greece now I only payed 5 € but for 90 min.
If ever the Internet connection improves then Skype is the best
if not then she should try to find somebody with a private phone (at home) and call from there and pay the communication to the owner. That's cheap then. Public phones and hotels are always expensive and with mobile phones even more.
We will be in Italy at the Garda lake from 29 june on for 10 days. I hope my internet connection will be better than last year because I got crazy!
In Italy and the rest of Europe you can buy and drink as much Alcohol as you want from age of 18 on. Then you are officially considered as an adult. So she can buy as many bottles she wants it depends how many she is allowed to bring to the States. In between Europe you can bring a lot ! We used to fill up our car with beer and wine to bring it over to my son who lived in London where beer and wine was very expensive and still is !
Nobody cares very much to serve wine or beer or other stuff to teenagers, officially it's 18 but most of the youngsters are drinking beer or wine much younger than that and neither the restaurants nor the bars pay attention to the age. It's not at all like in the States where we were so surprised about the laws in different States ! My poor husband wasn't used to that at all when he wanted to buy a bottle of Dubonnet and had to show his driver licence ! He was 30 at that time and in Utah it was allowed from age of 24 on ! If you have any question just ask !
That is a lot of moving!
I hope your daughter has a great time in Italy! I've love to make it there someday.
Good luck with your sewing projects!
no suggestions, but I'd like to go.
My son has spent several years in Spain and we used Skype with no problem. He also bought a cel phone there which worked great. He spent a few months in Greece as well and all he had to do was purchase the chip for that country. We used phone cards we purchased from Costco but I can't remember the cost now.
I too love to sew and have been making baby blankets for my daughter. I wish I could knit better but I really want to learn to crochet. My mother does both and makes some really beautiful things.
As always I am catching up here but I hope these kinks have been worked out by now. Sounds like you have been busy busy busy!
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