Welcome to Florence!

Hey everyone! I am safe and sound in my hotel room in Florence! I have officially been awake for 32 hours (peppered with a few short naps) and I’m about to crash… hard, but I wanted to write this to you all before I fall asleep, even though I won’t be able to post it until tomorrow since I have no wifi here. 

My plane took off from JFK at 5:45 PM on Sunday, January 23^rd.  I somehow managed to score a window seat on BOTH my flight to Munich and the connecting flight to Florence, so I was pumped. For my first flight, the window seat did nothing since we were flying into midnight, but it was really awesome to look out the window as see how close the stars looked, as if we were parallel to them (airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars, tehe). I sat behind my new fraannd Erica (Erica, if you read this, I know you’ll chuckle as a fellow-blogger) that was nice since we chatted for a while before takeoff. I also sat next to this very nice German gentleman who seemed to be so flustered at the amount of American students on the flight that he took two sleeping pills and zonked out before we even took off.

The plane was wicked nice; it had monitors on the back of every seat so my in-flight insomnia was cured by a plethora of movies and TV shows. First I watched “Eat, Pray, Love” to assuage my nerves about moving to a foreign country and reawaken my love of exploring new cultures. The segment on Italy got me very excited to be flying there and inspired me to order my first, officially LEGAL alcoholic beverage from the flight attendant. Technically, since we were over international waters, the drinking age drops down to 18 and when Erica ordered hers with not so much as a bat-of-the-eye from the flight attendant, I took it upon myself to order a glass a white wine, and it was delicious.

Sadly enough, the two glasses of wine (which went along perfectly with the cheese and grape platter I bought at JFK) didn’t put me to sleep no matter how hard I tried. So, I watched “Easy A” which was odd but slightly funny, a rerun of 30 rock, Glee and Modern Family. And finally, since I was missing Brendan a little, I watched “The Town.” I really enjoyed this movie and put a solid two hours into watching it right before landing. Then, as soon as the climax was coming up- the pilot announced we should turn our monitors off, and I missed the entire ending. What annoyed me the most was the fact that my sleepy, German seatmate was so delirious that he never even turned his TV off and continued watching “Cats and Dogs II” (with Japanese subtitles) until we landed. Bastardo!

ANYWAY- we landed in Munich, Germany in a blizzard. Literally, I thought we were still in the clouds as we pulled onto the snow-covered runway. It was so snowy that they not only had to keep us seated on the plane while they plowed the gate but our flight was delayed an hour.  This actually worked to our advantage because we had to go through German security, even though we had just gone through American security in New York. The German security was so ridiculously strict that I almost let the word “Nazi” slip as we were all passing through the metal detector, but realized that may be a sore subject just in time to shut my mouth.

We were all so delirious and drained that we just sat on the floor of the airport until they boarded us. We took a much smaller plane to Florence so we had the honor of trucking through the blizz before boarding (since the plane was too small to board from an indoor gate). Of course, I was one of the last people to board the flight, so when I finally got on I was completely covered in snow. That was yummy and fun.

Luckily I dozed a bit on the flight (which was only an hour) and when I finally came to we were in Florence! When we entered the baggage claim we heard that the flight before us had lost 26 bags, so I started to freak out that my suitcase wouldn’t be there- aka all my clothes, toothpaste, books, shoes. But thankfully it was. One of Erica’s bags was delayed, so I stayed behind to help her notify the airline. I ran into Paige (that one’s for you Nico) flying in from France, which was awesome! But since there were SO MANY lost bags, we ended up missing the first bus to our hotel so we had to wait an hour and a half for the next one. Normally, I would be complaining about this but the Florence weather was BEAUTIFUL! The sun was warm and shining and I think I actually got some color while waiting for that bus.

The bus took us to our hotel where I found Rach already checked into our room. Rach and I were both so exhausted that we chatted for a bit, but fell asleep very quickly and didn’t wake up until we had to go down to fill out paper for our Permesso di Sorgginio (permission to stay in Italy visa). We had dinner after that painstakingly long process and then decided to forgo going out and come back to sleep. We accidently flooded our bathroom while attempting to turn on the shower (oops). But this is where you find me now- 9:38 PM (Florence time, so 3:38 PM your time) on January 24, 2011. I feel like I’ve lost a day but now I want to sleep for a week. Unfortunately, we have a 7 am wakeup call (that’s 1 am for you!) to start our official orientation. Love you all and goodnight!