First Days Abroad

I am officially in Italy! Travel was fairly uneventful other than me getting stuck with a middle seat for the LAX direct to Paris leg. Middle seat. In coach. I didn't sleep a wink. That said- neither did the guy on the aisle since I made him get up about every 2 hours so I could use the ladies room. C'est la vie.

So here I am! But no Baby Manetti just yet. The most exciting thing on my end so far has been last night at dinner, the waiter brought us out a special treat as a gift from the kitchen. It was raw pork sausage. That we were expected to eat. Raw. Not cooked rare, but cold and raw. I ate it- it tasted fine, but I'm convinced I'm going to catch some sort of bacterial disease now. Crazy Italy. The rest of the meal was just amazing as only the food here can be. And I've already had hot cocoa from Rivoire so life is pretty good. Now for the baby to come!

I have some excellent pics of Kate and her belly, the new stroller, the baby room etc which I will post in the next day or so.

So as smoothly as things are going here, they are going not so smoothly for Ben.

He arrived at the airport to check in for Nicaragua and found that there is some asanine embargo going on where you can't check oversized luggage (in his case two beloved surfboards). He had no time, no options, and was forced to leave them at the counter where they promised to hold them until midnight before throwing them away. Yikes. So I get a frantic voicemail in Italy seeing if I can get my sister to pick them up- which she did bless her heart, but she had her car die in a red zone while she was at it and had the police and various passerby yelling at her while she got some stranger to jump start her- so it's safe to say we owe her pretty big.

Meanwhile Ben made it as far as Houston before he hit the next snag, which was a 9.5 hour delay on the runway due to weather including snow. Jimmy, who he is meeting down there, had his original flight cancelled and is due to get in a day late.

I am happy to report that Ben is now, officially in Nicaragua, though my last text from him reads the following:
"Just got pulled over and had to bribe la policia. Such poverty here. All I can think of is the MIA song Paper Planes."

So... I'm sure he'll have more stories on his end before the week is out.

Hopefully I will have a more active post soon! I keep offering to rub Kate's feet to try and hit a pressure point that will induce labor... stay tuned.