Day One

Author: Stephanie

We slept until 10:30 and would have continued on except for a ringing bell in our apartment. Turns out we have a doorbell, and the maintenance men ringing it were there to clean the mold that covered the bathroom ceiling. Good thing. We then headed off to explore the base where we're living, the Support Site. The Navy has two sites in Naples. The Support Site is just what it sounds like - schools, grocery store, exchange (i.e., department store), barber, hotel, schools, housing, hospital, thrift store, and so on. The Support Site is out in the boondocks, about 20-30 minutes from downtown Naples. The 2nd site is Cappodochino and is located on the back side of the Naples airport. So when you come to visit, Nathan can watch your plane land from his office. We headed off to the thrift store to pick up a book put out by the area Officers' Spouses Club, "Shopping in the Boot," which tells us all about markets, their locations and days of operation, and all sorts of great info. The commissary (grocery store) is very interesting because as I was wondering down the soap aisle, I happened to glance down, and this is what I saw:


The commissary is built on top of ruins. Apparently, almost anything you try to build in these parts is built on top of ruins. So Day One, without even leaving the base, we've gotten to see some Roman ruins. We did actually leave the base on the shuttle bus to the other base in order to see if Nathan's driver's license, which expired yesterday, had arrived from the state of FL. Success! Here's a photo from the bus:

That's Mount Vesuvius. We are that close. Part of our orientation is a safety brief, and I hope it includes the topic "What to do in the event of a large volcanic eruption that doesn't kill you immediately."

Nathan saw our car today, so as soon as we get our international driver's licenses (on Tuesday) and the new registrations, we're mobile! We also checked out the libraries on both bases, and I am very pleased. Each of them had a book I've been wanting that my library back home still had on order. We can also put in requests for books from libraries in the States, so my reading supply will continue, and I didn't have to buy an entire bookcase of books prior to this move. Too late now. We find out tomorrow whether we get to live off base or not, and if it's off base, then we're hoping to spend the weekend house-hunting. Or sight-seeing. Either would be great.