From International Mail to E-mail

Sending letters to other countries always makes me nervous.  I wonder if they will arrive.  For example, I wrote to my Hawksley correspondent in England when I arrived in South Korea, but have not heard back from her.  I need to write to her again.

Meanwhile, last week I sent a letter to our cousins in Italy.

Imagine my great joy and excitement to wake up this morning to an email from my 4th cousin AND a friend request from him on Facebook! 

I responded the minute I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes (we are 8 hours ahead of Italy, 14 hours ahead of the U.S. east coast), thanked him for writing, and accepted his friend request. 

Of course I informed him that we will be moving to Germany in November, and that I would be making plans to visit Busca (the town in Italy where some of my cousins live). 

I am not sure if any of them are particularly interested in genealogy or know much about the family, even though they live right there.  The fact that I will even have the opportunity to meet our cousins face to face is exciting enough for me.

If I have to tackle visits to the Catholic church and town officials on my own, I don't mind.  I'll probably spend more time brushing up on my Italian, than studying German.  ;)