Arrival in Italy

I was planning to write a post while I was at the airport, however, I found myself far too overwhelmed and emotional to sit down and write. Don't worry, I have finally made it to Rome after a long, delayed plane ride and the stress of finding my way through the airport. :) I have started to meet a lot of the girls in my building and they are all so awesome! We all seem to have come by ourselves, looking to just site see and have an amazing summer traveling around Italy. They are all from different schools and it has just been really great since being here. So far, no tears in Italy! For those of you that truly know me, that's a big step! Of course, the airport and airplane was an entirely different story.

After I got my baggage and found the IES Staff member, I was set up with one of the girls on the program (Kristi) to take a cab together to our apartment. The cab driver drove like a manic and I felt so nauseous. He dropped us off, without speaking much english, and told us our apartment was somewhere around the block. We start walking, with our 4 pieces of heavy luggage, and see the numbers 16, 15, 14.. 18? Where did 10 go!? Kristi and I stopped in the middle of the bustling area and Kristi held my luggage while I walked into a random hair salon to ask them for directions. Of course, none of the ladies spoke any english, so I had to try to use some of the slim knowledge of Italian that I learned from my "self-learning CDs". So I say "Piazza Ottavilla Dieci" and keep repeating "dieci dieci dieci" so that maybe they'd understand. Of course, she didn't and just told me that this area was a square. But, we finally manage to find it and everything was ok. My first Italian mis-communication and adventure! ;)

I have tried to settle in some of my stuff but I am so tired. I am trying hard to not fall asleep yet so I can set my body clock to Italian time (7 hours ahead of Chicago). I barely slept on the plane so I have basically been up for WAY over 24 hours. :(



This is a picture of my bed and of the view outside the window from my room. It's pretty plain and boring but the apartment itself is actually much bigger than I expected. They didn't provide me with a blanket, but savvy me, I took the one off the airplane JUST IN CASE I wouldn't be satisfied with the one they provided. Being an obsessive control freak DOES have it's benefits sometimes! :)

My Italian Companion Student, Daria, took my apartment and the apartment of girls on the 2nd floor of my building out to show us around the neighborhood and meet the other building of girls on our program. We just went to the supermarket, learned where to get on the bus, and where to get gelato nearby! Right now, she is making us some pasta dinner, a salad, and fruit salad. Just something low key for the first night and maybe I'll walk over a block to get some gelato! It wouldn't be a summer night for me without ice cream!

Tomorrow starts orientation so it's all starting to feel real. I really need to just relax and let everything happen and stop being so emotional!!

Overall, I think I'm off to a pretty good start. I'll definitely post again soon! (I really like this whole blog thing!)

Grant got this fortune cookie before I left: Rome was not built in a day. Be patient.

Trying to keep that in mind.

Everything will be OK.