Got an appointment to talk to someone!

March 28th - after my fourth phone call I finally got through and was able to get an appointment for 15 minutes to ask questions on Monday morning. Hoo rah!

Los Angeles Consulate

March 26th - these people are pretty hard core. I called to ask questions and the man said you couldn't just do that. You have to make an appointment to ask questions. Ok...in order to do that I needed to call after 2. So I called after 2 and was told to call after 9 the next day. Maybe I'm having bad luck, or maybe they're taking me for a ride. It's funny though because if you call when they're closed or try an extension and the person isn't there you get this recording that says "Do not leave a message. We will not return your call."

National Archives

March 25 - today, after some digging and several phone calls, I got in touch with someone in at the Waltham Archives, which is the division of the NARA that serves where GG used to live. I sent an email with all of GGs info in it and they are supposed to respond within 10 days saying they either have the record of naturalization or they don't...

Birth, death and marriage certificates

This information is surprisingly easy to get. It's just time consuming and you have to be super nice. I have found out a lot of information about where to get the other certificates and apostilles. Now we just need to hear back from Bisceglie about the birth certificates and find out about naturalization stuff. Getting all the US certificates is a piece of cake.

Email to Bisceglie

March 19th - today we sent an email to Bisceglie, which is the small as town that GG is from. It's really hard to translate stuff to Italian because we speak SO MUCH slang and don't even realize it. Finally Bobby got it done and sent it. We aren't even sure if we went it to the right place. But hopefully we'll hear something...

Found out the date he died!

March 18th - today I continue my quest to find out everything I can about Bobby's GG. No one will tell me anything. People keep snapping at me saying "We don't do genealogy over the phone". I keep calling different numbers. I know there is someone out there who can do a simple search and help me. I make yet another phone call and am met with the same "We don't do genealogy". I said "I'm not doing genealogy! I just need a death certificate." I'm put on hold for a long time, but then a different lady picks up and promptly looks up the information and just gives me the date! I couldn't believe it. Mary Jane. What a great lady.

Ancestry.com

March 17th - we've been trying to find out everything we can about Bobby's GG. No one is his family knows anything much. We find ancestry.com and wonder if it's bull, but we sign up for a free trial. We find a 1930 US Census with his GG on it, which provides us with his age and lists him as an alien, which is good for us. We still don't know when he died or his birth date.

Rosetta Stone

March 15th, 2008 - we are researching ordering the Rosetta Stone Italian program so that we can learn as much as we can. It's way expensive but I run into a post that says to see if your public library has an online subscription. Ours does! So we started doing the lessons right away.

Meet with AZ Italian Consulate

March 14th, 2008 - today we met with Tony - he's a volunteer for the Italian Consulate in Arizona. He was encouraging, but couldn't really help us all that much. The consulate that we actually do all of this through is in Los Angeles. Afterwards we decided that all of our energy should go into getting the GGs birth certificate because if we can't get that then none of the other stuff matters.

So far...

Bobby recently found out that he is eligible for dual citizenship. Technically he actually is a dual citizen, but he just has to prove it. Even if no one ever reads this I thought it would be interesting just for myself to sort of document the process since "proving it" can be a pretty long road. I hope to look back on all these posts one day holding my US and Italian Passport. Here's what's happened so far:

May 2007 - we return from our honeymoon in Italy and start fantasizing about living there...nothing really concrete ever comes of it until:

February 2008 - we put our condo up For Sale By Owner with the thought of moving to Boise.

Then one day over dinner we're "talking about our feelings" and one of our mutual dreams is to live in Italy. For some reason, for the first time, we start seriously talking about it - about doing it and not just talking about it.

So we start looking at ways to get visas. Bobby comes across dual citizenship - we didn't even know this existed. It doesn't seem real or feasibly at first. But then we realize Bobby really does meet all of the criteria. Bobby created this really cool google document where we are putting all the information we find on dual citizenship. Now we're on a quest.