Why yes it did! Labor Day is passed, the weather is getting cooler and now School is back in session and Katherine is facing the school year like last year... Striving for good grades, good fun and good activities.

This year, her homeroom teacher’s name is Mrs. Salerno. She is in the Immersion Class. There is one class in grades 2 - 6 that are selected by their teachers from last year to participate in the Immersion Class.

What makes this class so special is that instead of just getting one class a week in Italian Culture AKA Host Nation, they get schooling every morning in Italian. The neighbors are already asking her to go to the market and translate what the locals are saying. By the way, if you owe Katherine a letter, she checks daily and doesn’t forget! So mail her today!

I think in the last newsletter, I mentioned that Tony was a starter on the MSC Sealift Mariners’ Softball team, what I failed to mention was that they barely was able to scrape up enough people to play for each game. The season is over and it really got exciting towards the end of the season for the Mariners. After the slow start, they seemed to get everything together, and was able to put a few good games together in a row. Tony continued to start and going into the last week, they had three games left and if they won all three, they were in for sure. If they won two, they may get into the tournament. Well, they lost the first one to the CINCSOUTH Band, yes, the band. Pretty sad, but they were the band only by name. They took on the All-Star players from the NATO Base and WHOOPED the Mariners. The next game was against the dreaded NCTAMS EurCent team. ‘TAMS had beat the Mariners in their previous meeting. The Mariners were on a mission though and easily shut out ‘TAMS team. Well, we didn’t score any runs in the game against ‘TAMS either because they had hit the skids in the later part of the season and a lot of their team didn’t even show up. We got a forfeit. What the Hey! It was a win! The last game was a make up game against the Band. Well, let’s just say they were more merciful to us the first game when they only whooped us. No tournament this year for the Mariners.

Tony’s batting picked up towards the end of the season and was one of the primary scorers in the last three games. You may remember that the only one of those games the Mariners won was the forfeit. In fact, he scored one run and if he hadn’t, there would have been a mercy run in the third inning of the last game. Since he scored the run, the mercy rule wasn’t invoked until the fifth inning.

In case you didn’t know, Joy took a job back in the spring with the Child Development Center. Now, she is enrolled in a class on Early Childhood Development. I guess she wants to know what makes all those little kids so bad. It is a Saturday class with the University of Maryland. Our neighbor across the hall, Jane Flores is taking it too. Jane is British and talks funny, but a really nice lady. Her husband, Pierre, (he’s Irish! go figure?) works for Security, so whenever Tony plays racquetball with him, he lets him win in case Tony ever needs to get a ticket fixed. Anyway, this isn’t about them, Joy and Jane are doing great in the class and are expecting a ‘B’ at the very worst. Next term, they may take some computer classes together. Best of luck to them both.

Katherine spent another night within the confines of Carney Park for a friend’s birthday party. With the Girl Scouts and friends, she is turning into quite the Outdoors Person. Look out Grizzly Adams, here comes Katherine!

The day started with a hike up the crater (did I mention that Carney Park is in an extinct volcano). Most of the city of Naples is old volcanoes.

If you were a recipient of the "Sexy Pasta" you probably think you have been overcooking the pasta. If you haven’t seen it, here is the story.

On Joy’s Birthday, Joy and Tony took a Tour of the City of Naples. During the tour, we happened by a shop where the owner said that he had something that would make us laugh. We walked in the store and the Morale went straight through the roof. He showed us a bag of pasta and said that this is proof that Americans overcook the pasta in the bag was pasta in the shape of male genitalia. When you make it over to here and you think the pasta is too hard, or not cooked long enough think about the ‘Sexy Pasta’ and if you are a women, enjoy. If you want to see a sample of it, or would like to taste it, send a request and 3000 Lire to Joy. I think she can find her way back to the shop.

That’s right, Katherine is enrolled in the Naples Elementary School’s Talented and Gifted program this year. This year like last year, her teacher is Mrs. Alexander.

Project One: The legal process. They are putting on a play of the Case of the Big Beautiful Wolf vs. the Third Little Pig. The class will perform the play for a couple of classes and the class will be the Jury. Katherine will be playing the Judge for one class and the chorus for the other.

But that’s not the big news. Tony’s birthday is coming up. The biggest news is that Katherine’s will be out during this quarter too. The next newsletter isn’t due out until January. Send presents and cards (the and means to send both) to the address on the top of the page. Another milestone to happen this quarter is the one year anniversary of our arrival in Bella Napoli. That’s right, this month, the 29th for those of you who care, we will have been here one year. Two to go! If you are planning on coming over, time is running out.

Y2K! III? Public Service Announcement

Y2K? OK, now we know that checking for the "Millennium Bug" is more that bumping up your PC to 12:59 31 December 1999 and waiting for a couple of minutes to see if it will keep working. I don’t know about you, but I think there is going to be a run on a lot of banks in December 1999. Holes in your yard will be the new banks of the millenium.

Just think about all of the conveniences we have now. Banking on the Net, Fund Transfers, Credit Cards, ATMs. One chip in some obscure computer in the back room can bring your financial status from Donald Trump to ... well, me.

You do all of your Christmas shopping and the new year rolls around and there’s a bit of confusion, but you are coping. Here comes that big bill from Christmas. And you know all of your creditors will be Y2K Compliant, but what about the bank where your automatic deposit of your check goes? Well, let’s just say that your check comes back with the BIG "NSF" on it! For some of us (and you know who you are) we are used to seeing the NSF!

What about the IRA, the Money Market, your Mutual Funds, Stocks, Bonds etc. What do you do?

My payday is the 1st and 15th of each month and I have to get Direct Deposit of my paycheck. But if the regular payday comes on a weekend or holiday, it is moved up to the first non-weekend/non-holiday December 31, I have a day to get the money out. Don’t any of you try to dig it up either.

What about you? Just in case you didn’t know, January 1, 2000 is on a Saturday. By the way, a lot of experts expect the Internet to go down for the Millennium. More next time!

Well the second trip to Bahrain went off in mid-August and Croatia came less than 24 hours later. Both, well, they weren’t total flops.

Next on schedule may be London for a couple of days. The Military Sealift Office in London is closed down and they are in need of a computer person to help move their computer data from the MSC computer to an old jalopy. Seeing that I’m old, I was the most qualified for the job. There is another trip to Rotterdam on the horizon, but since I have been there, I am hoping that one of my better troops will be able to go instead of me. All of them want to know why I am the one that always seems to go. Joy seems to wonder that too. So, why not spread the wealth? I am just nice that way. I really would rather stay home most of the time.

My boss is planning on going to Rotterdam too. He’s a good boss, but I’ve heard stories about him when he leaves town! From what I hear, he needs a designated driver a lot. That shouldn’t be a problem in Rotterdam however, you can take the trains anywhere.

My #1 Rotterdam memory is the vagrant that told us how lucky we were he quit robbing people. So we should give him some of guilders since he is doing something with his life.

You got the Naples city brief before, now a little about Italy and the Province of Napoli.

First, in case you are confused, Napoli is the name of the city we call Naples, Italia is the name of the country and Roma is the name of the Capital city. Italy is broken up into several Regions and each sort of like our East Coast, South, Midwest, Plain States etc. The region we live in is called Campagnia. Each region is made up of several provinces, similar to our states. The base is in the province of Napoli. All of their provinces’ capital city is also the name of the province. We live in the province or Caserta, in a town named Gricignano di Aversa. It is in the Campagnia region.

The province of Napoli has in it, the Capodimonte Factory where beautiful porcelain flowers and Franklin Mint porcelain plates are made. Also the city of Sorrento famous for inlaid wood. The Isle of Capri can be seen off the coast from the Tangenziale. For those history buffs, we have, right here in Napoli, the city of Pompeii and the infamous Mount Vesuvius AKA Vesuvio to the Italians. If you come, there is plenty to do. If you really feel lucky we can take you inside the crater that is affectionately known to the Americans as Carney Park.

It looks the same, but one number was added to the

Area Code. 011 39081 811-5326