Adventure to Italy

We have made it to Italy. It was quite an adventure.

Let's start with the plane ride to Amsterdam. We were sitting in the Chicago O'Hare airport. We had a little bit of waiting to do before we could board the plane, so I decided to try and connect to the internet. My computer came on and all sorts of error messages started popping up. My first thought and only thought was that my computer was crashing. I have never had a virus on my computer in the two years that I have owned the thing. And it would be just my luck for it to crash the day I leave for four months. Thank the lord that I bought an external hard drive prior to leaving for Italy.

Well we boarded the plane. It was huge and Bliss, Tim and I all sat together in one row. Each seat had it's own tv screen, which I was extremely thrilled about. The thing I wasn't thrilled about was the screaming child two rows in front of us. We hadn't even taken off and I wanted to strangle the kid. The flight was okay, but extremely long. I watched the beginning of several movies, never actually finishing any. I made the bad choice to watch all the war movies....not sure why I thought that was a good idea.

All in all it was a pretty decent flight. Even though sleeping was virtually impossible. We had cajun chicken for supper on the flight...which was extremely disgusting.

After getting off the plane in Amsterdam, we had to go through security again. This time wasn't as smooth as the last. I walked through the security thinger and was told I needed to be padded down. So...I was padded down by a lady. I quit violated. They literally touch EVERY part of your body. More than a little uncomfortable.

Well we got to the waiting area for our flight to Rome. Bliss and I decided to attempt to call our parents. The pay phone wouldn't allow us to use a calling card. It said we had to use a "red phone." We asked a young man at a little concession stand where we would locate this "red phone" and he seemed just as confused as we were. So then we decided to try and use a credit card and make a quick call, just to inform the rents that we made it alive. Well...we couldn't figure out how to get that to work either. We finally resorted to paying for the internet at the airport in order to send a quick email.

Our flight from Amsterdam to Rome was fast. It was a smaller plane and a lot bumpier ride. I was very happy when that plane finally hit the ground. As we got off the plane, I was full on checked out by a teenager in a red shirt (at least this is what Tim tells me). We walked the opposite way as our luggage for awhile, when we finally realized we were headed the wrong way.

After getting our luggage, we were very confused as to where to go next. We walked around, toting our luggage, for quit some time before we were headed in the right direction. Let me tell you...going up the escalator dragging two HUGE rollable bags is not an easy task. If Tim wasn't standing below we...I would have definitely fallen down the escalator, with my luaggage trailing behind me.

The walk from the airport to the Hilton hotel sucked. It was the longest, hottest, most draining walk I have been on. I pulled a muscle in my arm during the process. And barely got my luggage on the moving sidewalks. I was livid that we had to tote all of our stuff that far.

Check in at the hotel went smoothly. We had to wait a while for a shuttle to finally take us to our apartment. It was a long ride. We finally got dropped off on a street in a kinda desolate area. The driver was about to take off without telling me where to go next. He pointed to a door that we were supposed to go to. He spoke no English, which made communication hard.

We had to roll our luggage up two sets of stairs before reaching the door to the apartment building. It took us awhile to figure out how to get into it. And it took us even longer to figure out which apartment was ours. The keys here are about 3 times the size as American ones. And we had no idea how to get in the room. Once we finally got in, we pulled our bags in the room and crashed for a couple hours.

We woke up and went to dinner with our roommates a Sale & Peppe (or something like that). I had my first Italian dinner with a nice glass of wine....or two glasses...ummmm maybe three. After eating we came back to the apartment and unpacked. I was thrilled to find that we have wireless internet in our apartment. AND my computer is working fine.

Tomorrow we have orientation at 12:30pm.

It is time for me to try and get some sleep.