Ciao Chicago, London, and Paris. Ciao

Let the adventures begin! Leaving O'Hare (and showing off my Wisconsin pillow, obviously.)

I’ve been awake for the past 22 hours, which isn’t too bad, but in those hours I have: Driven from Milwaukee, said hello and goodbye to four different airports (which means three sets of security), passed through customs (in France, which is great because I speak almost no French), and flew for approximately 11 hours (if I did my math right for the tenth time). I left for Chicago from home today at 1pm Central Time on Monday, flew to Heathrow, then to Paris, then changed airlines and flew into Florence, and arrived at my new apartment at about 4pm Florence time.

Here's while I was saying a little good morning to London and it's lovely sunrise:

I was doing pretty well and then started to freak out quite a bit during the tail end of the first flight, and some mild nausea didn’t help. The second flight was great, and our captain was really fun I thought. Just seemed like a nice guy. Also, though I only have a little experience with airplane food, I experienced one of the most interesting things on my second flight today: “Milk in a stick” It was basically like a sip of milk, but I still thought it was funny.

The third flight was interesting because I was passed out before we even took off, woke up briefly, before falling back to sleep, and when I awoke the second time, I saw some beautiful mountains way in the distance and wondered if those were the Swiss Alps. Soon we were flying over this large lake, and I thought it might be Lake Geneva. Sure enough, it was! I was pretty excited about that. And pretty damn proud that I got myself a window seat specifically and only for that flight.

I freaked out again a little more when I first got out at the Florence airport as I waited with other members of my program (SAI) just being kind of intimidated (because I appaently haven't grown up at all since middle school) and that got a little better, especially when we started to drive to our apartments. I live in an apartment with five other girls and I must say it is gorgeous. The view from our room and all. The people I live with seem to be pretty nice, one of them I met in the airport which was cool because we didn’t have to go in alone then.

Soon though, five of us went out to grab some dinner, and we sat at this little pizza place not far from us, which played American music and gave me parmesan with my pasta but it was still very good, especially considering I hadn’t really eaten a decent-sized meal in a while. I had spaghetti alla carbonara for dinner and it was quite delicious. More eggy than we normally make here, I think, which was actually oddly refreshing. I ate quite a bit of it without extra cheese (as they say you’re supposed to do here in Italy) and then caved. …It was MUCH better with some extra cheese. We had wine and water as well and all talked and whatnot so that was good. Then we found and even MORE adorable gelato place that I will probably visit a couple hundred times before I leave the city. Mine caramel flavor. It was good, but very caramel-ie and therefore very sweet. I plan to try the pistachio next time.

We came back home after that and then embarrassed by a local because we couldn’t open our front door to the apartment building… or the inner door after that. It was embarassing and a little awkward but still quite funny. Our toilet also doesn’t flush so that’s been interesting, but I just learned that the single-person room has this long skinny little bathroom attached! It’s so funky but I love it! And it also helps with the no-toilet-flushing thing for sure.

So that was about all for the night, it’s been a bit of a roller coaster day, but good, and a good challenge all the same. We start some long days full of orientation stuff tomorrow so I imagine we will all be pretty worn out. It’s only 10pm here but all of my roommates are asleep, even though I can hear more locals outside now than I think I could when it was light out. But I will leave it at that and call it a night.

Love, abbie