So after an amazing weekend exploring a new corner of Italy, the past two days brought us back to the reality of our “normal” lives, and preparing for our relocation to Uzbekistan.
It’s always an interesting conversation when we talk to people who want to visit us here in Italy. “We’ll go out for so much amazing food!”, “We’ll see so many amazing places!”, “You’ll be our personal tour guide, right?”… time out! All of these things are true, but the reality is, we aren’t on vacation in Italy every day. We live our lives here, have jobs, go grocery shopping, have a budget, expenses, go to the doctor, etc… We live our lives in a sort of parallel universe to everyone “back home”. Yes, we’re in Italy. Yes, it’s great here. But we are normal people with normal stuff to do. Could we go to Venice every weekend? Sure, just like someone who lives in Orlando can go to Disney World every weekend… doesn’t mean they do.
Typically, we set the alarm every morning for 6:30am, roll out of bed, take too long getting ready, rush breakfast, and run out the door at least a few minutes late. I have a commute that varies between 15 and 30 minutes depending on which office I’m going to. My office is perfectly normal, and most days I sit at a computer and attend boring meetings. I’ll go out to lunch with guys from work on average about once a week, otherwise I’m eating lunch at my desk. Commute home is the same, and most evenings we’re both home by 5:30pm. Dinner, Daily Show, bed. Our “normal” lives in Italy.
Today, after our normal day, the new normal fast approaching is our move to Uzbekistan. After our usual dinner and Daily Show, we were visited by a representative from Move One, the company who will be packing us up for our relocation this summer. The first of two moving companies to visit, we gave them a tour of what we think we’ll be taking with us after our epic house purge (and massive donation to the thrift shop).
We’re embarking on a new minimalistic lifestyle, which actually feels quite liberating, and will likely be a popular blog post in the near future. Notsomuch a chore as an exercise in realising what we can live without, which is in reality living with so much more of what’s really important, here in Italy, and wherever we go in the future.
Intentionally International 
We enjoy reading your adventures in Italy ! We have not visited ourselves but almost feel as if we have !! Thankyou ! We’re glad we don’t have to fly there !
I was so haopy that yall were our “personal tour guides” while we were in Italy! It meant so much to us and really made our trip extra special 🙂
But I assume it’s because I’m your sister… 🙂