Milan darlin, Milan!

So, the summer´s coming to an end and as I´m typing I don´t know if I´ve forgotten how to use a keyboard or if the one I´m using is going crazy because i´m typing everything wrong and I can´t find the apostraphy on any of the keys. Stinky european keyboards! Anyway, this looong year has come to an end and I thought I would talk about the amazing summer I had. (Which I say in complete enthusiasm, because it was really scary at times and super stressful) The story begins in the late days of June and in the early days on July...


We had just taken a huge road trip all the way from our house to Italy. Finally! the country of spaghetti and pizza 3 meals a day! Our first stop- Milan, the fashion capital of the world. It was a day of hard rain and hail, and we were all glad that the weather had somewhat cleared a bit for us to be able to get out of the car and do sightseeing. We park our car right in front of an ATM, with camaras that should have been looking out onto the street, smack dab on our car. None of us really thought anything about leaving our car out in the street. What could go wrong? We´ve travelled all over without even a scratch on our car. (Allright, there was a dent in the front door from slamming it on a post, but a really small one. And in defense of the rider in shotgun, that 3 foot pole should not have been in the middle on nowhere) We were out of the car for maybe an hour. Maybe even an hour and a half. We decided to make our way back from seeing a cool cathedral and walking by fake bags and coats and stuff to make our 3-5 minute walk back to the car, for it had started raining again. Seeing the car was probably the most stressful second our family has been in for a long time. The passenger seat window was broken, glass all over the floor. We were robbed. And it´s still hard for me to grasp the whole situation. Someone had broken into our car and had stolen my dad´s computer bag, of which had my dad´s computer with 10 years of info about oodles of stuff, bank info, all our passports from both countries since we´re double citizens, cash for the trip and our european ID cards (actually, that´s what we thought, by some miracle, my dad found them in his dresser at home a few days ago.) They had also stolen the GPS and my backpack, which had my wallet with the ID card, temple reccomend, addresses, and normal wallet stuff; my scriptures; both mine and my sister´s journal; and other backpacky stuff. From help by a passerby, we found out that the police station was around the corner (shows how good of policemen they are) and my dad went for help. It was mostly my job to calm down the people that were too emotional to think straight while two of my brothers walked around with an umbrella in hopes that the thief had thrown some of our stuff away. Because even though they can sell the computer, the passports and my backpack were completely useless to this guy. They came back with no luck, but they did find a pair of perfect gloves in a trashcan really close to our car, and we´re guessing that they were the thief´s. After what seemed like forever and after having the emotionals calm down a bit, my dad finally came back. I then went with him and my little siblings to go to the police station again because we all really had to go to the bathroom with all the excitement. I´ve learned one thing about the police in Italy- they stink. These guys could have cared less if one of us had been shot and I seriously think they could have been working for the mafia. They had told my dad that there was probably no chance of having our stuff returned because it was "very interesting stuff". Wait a sec, interesting stuff for the theif or interesting stuff for the policeman who found it? The only thing left for us to do was to get a new GPS and find a place to sleep for the night. It was late and the best thing to do was to sleep on the ordeal and figure out what to do in the morning.

This incident ruined our whole vacation. Two days after being robbed and after having the window fixed, we went to American consulet to get some new passports because without those, well, we´d still be back in Italy somewhere if we didn´t get passports. And let me tell ya, none of us wanted to be in Italy anymore. After spending foreven signing and filling out forms, we were then told to wait until Thursday so that the passports could be made (I´m pretty sure we were on Friday) As we were about to leave the awful city, the cherry was put on top of the icecream- our car´s ventilator broke. We stopped at a car place to have it fixed, and it turned out that they wouldn´t be able to fix until Wednesday (I think.) We were stuck at the car place for a good 3 hours or so, while everything was sorted our, and the whole time it was raining. We rented a 9 seater car, good thing we only have 10 in the family and not 11, right?, and we made our way to the campground were we would sleep that night. The next few days were days to try to get our minds off everything. We sightseed and swam. We never stayed in a city for too long, always afraid for our car, and sometimes we were only able to drive through cities becuase my mom got to worried. But we did eat a lot of icecream to make up for it! Wednesday finally came, we got our car, and then we waited until Thursday for our passports. We left our car in an underground parking at a hotel, took the subway and got our passports that Thursday. Afterward, we walked to the other consulet down the street to see if we could get our other passports there or wait for a more oportune time. One we got there, the nice worker handed us three of our european passports (two of my brothers´ and mine) that had been found on the street by the police and returned. Now we only have to find all the others! After having a wonderful chat with the consulet workers, my dad dropped all of the family off at the hotel while he, my brother, and I wandered the streets of Milan, looking for our stuff. We talked to police men and the lost and found building of Milan, where each and every one of them said that they couldn´t help us and that it was too late. We also talked to the bank who owned the ATM of which we were parked in front of, but they said that for security reasons, they couldn´t give us the film from 8 days before. They also said that they didn´t save the film after 7 days. So all in all, everyone was useless and we spent to whole day on a wild goose chase. They only help we got was from a taxi driver we met, who told us where thiefs and people up to know good sell things they steal. My older brother and my dad went to this flee market the next day, but with no luck. It turns out that if our stuff had been there, it would have been the first stuff to be sold because it was in such better shape than the junk there. (Which says a whole bunch because my wallet had ink stains all over and I had had my backpack since the 3rd grade. In the end, instead of only spending 2 hours in Milan, we spent 5 days, I believe me, I´m never going back.

Now that my pessimistic post has been read, here were the things I was grateful for during the trip-

1. I´m very glad that they stole my backpack. Seriously. The reason for this is because we had two computer bags, one with the info and passports and the other with more info and all the pictures from the whole year. This computer was in a bag that was in complete view, but the thief stole my bag that was on the floor. Even though I swear that I had put my bag on the side, but when i had woken up from a car nap to get out to sightsee Milan, it was on the floor, just waiting to be taken.

2. I´m glad that nothing happened to my family. My mom had almost stayed with some of the younger children in the car while we went to see the cathedral, but my dad decided that we should have all gone. I don´t even want to think about what happened if my mom had decided to stay.

3. That they didn´t steal anything else. The was no car that was behind us and the thief could have easily stolen all of our luggage if he needed help.

4. I´m grateful for my amazing dad! He was able to help us have fun throughout the trip and he did all he could to keep a cool head and make sure we did the same.

5. For all the nice italians we met to help us have a good time and enjoy ourselves.

6. That we could have had such a great experience touring places in Italy and getting fat on pasta and pizza and icecream!

8. That we could have gotten some passports back.

9. For the amazing taxi driver who brightened up my dad´s, brother´s and my day with his jokes and his willingness to help.

10. For being robbed in Milan. That´s right, I´m actually grateful that we were robbed. If we weren´t we would have gone to cities like Rome and Naples, were I´m certain something would have happened, such as having our car stolen with all the mafia running around. We´ve come to see it as a huge blessing to stopped something awful from happenning. And it made us realize that nothing in more important than having our family together.

And that was our summer! Now the house is all packed up and I´m writing at a computer in a hotel close to the airport, cause we´re coming back to reality... WE ARE COMING HOME!