We've had all sorts of fun experiences this week, including some truly Mambo Italiano moments. We've finally had to run the gauntlet of the local questura (immigration office), we've been negotiating a new rental lease, and we've spent a weekend with friends in Florence.

One of the major points to note about rental cars (and cars in general in Italy) is that this is still a market in which manual transmissions are the standard. Renting or purchasing an automatic is significantly more expensive.

The tale goes that La Befana was approached by the three wise men while they were on their way to greet the baby Jesus. They asked her to show them the way, but she turned them down because she was too busy with her sweeping.

Buon anno! We've officially started a new year in Italy, and I'm very excited about all that 2024 has in store for us…

The bambini had fun absolutely shredding the wrapping paper off their presents from Babbo Natale - literally Christmas Dad. Or the much more saucy slash creepy translation of Christmas Daddy.

Every time we welcome a new family member or friend, it opens my eyes once again to how lucky we are to be here and how perfect this town is for us. Not everything is easy, but it is beautiful - and if that doesn't just sum up the Italian experience, then I don't know what does!

There was a large crowd gathered at the entrance to the piazza right near our house. In the middle of the crowd, next to a large marble colonna, was a fire truck. Interesting.

The Italian customs experience is either non-existent, or the most time consuming and hideously inefficient process possible. In this case it was the former. From tarmac to pick up was about 10 minutes. It caught me quite off guard, as I'd planned to spend the wait time doing some research on the city's driving restrictions and parking options.

Success! I have ticked off another major bureaucratic task on my list. I finally went yesterday to the local hospital and enrolled myself and the bambini in the Italian national health service. 

I have a confession to make. I'm a little bit ashamed, but the reality is undeniable. The longer I spend here, and the more language I learn, the clearer it becomes. I have an Italian speech impediment. 

Christmas preparations have well and truly begun here in Lucca. The city has been strewn with fairy lights on all the main pedestrian streets in the centre, and many of the shops have begun to dress their windows with festive decorations. Most excitingly for me - panettone is everywhere!

So arduous (i.e. Italian) was the enrolment process, that I still didn't even know the night before the term was supposed to start if I had a place, or what time the lessons started. At home I would have given up weeks earlier, but it has been yet another lesson that in Italy, shameless persistence is the only way.

The rain has continued with gusto this week - and although we've been caught out and soaked a couple of times, we have yet to succumb to any major illness. Phew! I have to say though, the obsession with avoiding sickness as a result of being cold is already starting to rub off on us.

Eventually I appealed for help from some of the other people waiting, none of whom spoke English. Once it was established that I was there to seek medical attention for Leo, the whole room sprang into action.

What I have noticed about bikes in Lucca is that, as a local, the rustier and more generally decrepit your bike looks, the better. Nothing marks a foreigner more clearly than a shiny new cruiser bike without a scratch on it.

We are approaching the three month mark of our time here in Lucca, which has absolutely flown by. It feels a momentous milestone - no longer being just another blow in here on a 90-day tourist visa, but a proper resident of the city.

Our approach since we moved here has been to embrace as much of the Italian way of doing things as possible, even if it didn't seem to make sense to our very Australian minds.

One of the aspects of general attitudes here that I appreciate greatly is unabashed efficiency in tasks that aren't inherently enjoyable. Efficiency bordering on laziness, some may say, but aren't those two concepts very close and rather subjective?

It's been a busy week for us here in Lucca. We're in the midst of school orientation (inserimento) for Raffy and Leo - a highly complex operation which seems to take a month and involve different hours for each of them every day so we are all kept on the tip of our toes at all times.

David and I went for dinner the other night (with the lovely Ilenia - she of the magical tomatoes - babysitting the bambini) and we had a rare opportunity to catch up and reflect on everything about our move so far and how we're feeling.