Ellie B In Italy

 Hey Blog People, Guess what! Exciting news! My Visa came in the mail! I can officially get over to Italy. My dad got the notification that the package had arrived, and I opened it last night and there it was: my Italian Visa. Now that I have my passport and Visa, I could leave tomorrow if I really had to. It got to Chicago on August 2 and got back to me on August 28. Not long at all.  In other news, I have been doing a lot of shopping and prepping for Italy. I have started my list of things to bring. It is very hard to pack your life into a suitcase or two. WITH weight limitations. Thankfully, I'll be back for Christmas, so I can bring winter stuff back with me. But I have to be prepared. I think the list is coming along well so far.  And so is my Italian. Kind of. I'm working on it, ok? I don't want to be completely in the dark when I get there, and at least now I can count to 100 and say address and order coffee, so I can survive for a bit.  Anyway, just wanted to...

 Hello Blog People, I've been thinking for a while that I need to do a little update on here. I need to get in the habit of writing to people and letting them know the process. I can't remember if I said why I was doing a blog over my trip, but the short answer is this. A lot of people have said "Send me pictures!", " Let me know how it goes!", and other things like that. And instead of sending my pictures to tons of people and probably forgetting many, I figured I would just put them in one place and let people come and see as they would like to. Then I don't have to say "oh yes! I definitely will send you pictures!". Instead I can say, "Oh I actually will have a blog going while I'm over there, so let me just send you the link and you can check it when you want to." Anyway, I hope that works out, and that I stay vigilant about writing.  So here's where we are in the process so far. On July 31st, my dad and I drove up to the ...