Breaking News!

 “ Well surprise, surprise, surprise…” 

- Bruce Springsteen, Surprise, Surprise

This morning I received a very unexpected phone call from my service provider, telling me that the Philadelphia Consulate already responded to the comune’s request for a non rinuncia check!!! This is HUGE! We were not expecting them to respond anywhere nearly as quickly as they did - we were thinking it would be at least several weeks, at the earliest. This means I am cleared for recognition of my Italian citizenship!

I was told that Mayor Mimmo is planning on having some kind of citizenship recognition ceremony for me at the town hall this Thursday! I’m just waiting for Nicoletta to let me know what time.  My service provider (that is, Nicoletta’s boss) and Nicoletta were debating whether or not to tell me, or whether they should just inform me I had another appointment this week and let it be a surprise. In the end, he opted to call and tell me “in case you wanted to get dressed up for it.”  They were as shocked as I am that this all happened so fast; he says it may be a new record for one of his clients to receive their recognition so soon. 

I was advised I should bring a bottle of Prosecco with me to the ceremony.

After all the work of gathering documents, having documents amended, getting a court order to correct my grandfather’s birth certificate, getting them all Apostilled, and after all the preparation and planning for this journey, it seems very unreal that it’s finally happening. But it is!! Wow. I’m still in shock.

Unfortunately, the weather is not reflective of my current happy mood, as it’s been quite dreary and rainy for a large part of the day, so we didn’t go out anywhere to celebrate. We did, however, have these delicious taralli zuccherati for dessert:

To be sure, the ceremony will not exactly mark the end of the process.  Once I am recognized, I will need to have my all my documents transcribed into the records of the comune.  Once that has been completed, I can then request my Italian birth certificate and my Italian ID card.  After obtaining my ID card, I can schedule my passport appointment.  When our marriage record has been transcribed, we can then request a permesso di soggiorno for Paolo which will allow him to remain in Italy as the spouse of an Italian citizen, meaning we won’t need to worry about the 90/180 day rule for him - at least while we are resident in Italy.

Funny thing:  last evening, we were discussing the possibility of taking a trip via train to Rome at the end of this week for a few days, just for fun.  We’d considered leaving on Thursday and coming back either Saturday or Sunday; it looked as if the weather would be nice for walking around, dining outdoors, and so on.  We decided to think it over and talk about it again today.  We're really glad now that we didn’t book it immediately!  I guess Rome can wait another week or two :)