LONGEST. DAY. EVER.

I'm not entirely sure I have a grasp of time yet, but that's because I started my trip to Rome so early! My flight was at 10 (except actually at 7--good thing Mom caught that before I left...such a fail), and I got to Intercontinental. Or George Bush Intercontinental, as I was reminded as I walked in and found this:

Houston, what, what, what are you doing? But that randomness aside, look at Georgey!!! He is so hopeful, lookin' into the future with his jacket all casually slung over his shoulder. He's so young! I've decided that I love fetus!George.

Though, really, Texas? Really? Moving on.

I had spent the previous day at the beach with my friend Adrian and sister Kirsten. Here they are! Cute as can be.



I was really excited because I hadn't gotten a lot of sun in a while, and this proved to be a problem when I came home and found my skin BAKED. It was kind of awful.

What's up, sunburn?

So, here I am, dragging myself through the airport at 4:45 in the morning. My shirt's hurting my shoulders, my backpack carry-on is hurting my shoulders, and fetus!George is telling me to soar to new heights (I think it was Daddy Bush, but I'm not sure?). Oh, and I hadn't slept the night before because I was doing a combination of packing and talking to people on the phone.

I hop through security, take up four bins with all my stuff. Because I've got my backpack and my purse, which I crammed into my backpack. And then there were my shoes and sweater and all the things they make you take off when you go through security. I turn around, and there's a lady with bright blonde hair and bright pink eyeshadow, waiting patiently for me to finish.

Me: You can go.
Her: No, it's okay.
Me: I have a laptop.
Her: Bless you, child.

Needless to say, she passed. And after security, I needed coffee. That's when I remembered that Intercontinental has the TERMINAL C FOOD COURT!!! Seriously, I love airports. And I LIVE for that food court. It's fantastic on so many levels. I hit up Einstein Bagels and the only Starbucks I've ever been to where the entire staff spoke Spanish (note to self: learn Spanish). Then I hit the plane. We boarded a little late and were getting ready to go, but then there were power problems that needed to be fixed. So, we sat on the plane for an hour, and we were ready to go. The problems were fixed! Then, an air duct started leaking.

And I'm thinking, you know, this is fine, because I do have a connecting flight to Rome in Newark, but my layover's five hours. Another hour passes. Then they tell us to get off the plane.

Awesome. By the way, if you were wondering, a line of angry people with connecting flights (most of whom are currently missing them) looks like this:



I go up, and the lady's like, "You're fine! Just wait for the plane to be fixed." In two more hours (or, as they kept saying, FIVE MORE MINUTES! FIVE MORE MINUTES!), we hopped back on the previously powerless and leaky-air-duct plane and fly to Newark. By then, the flight had been delayed four hours. People were livid (especially because we had to watch the airplane safety video AGAIN). I've never witnessed people cursing in three different languages before, but there you go. Understood a lot of the Mandarin, too. Win!

The plane had three rows of seats, and I got a little two-seat row on the side to myself, which was nice, because I needed to sleep.



We got off the plane at Newark (AND MADE IT ON TIME WITHOUT FALLING OUT OF THE SKY--MIRACLE!), where I was immediately greeted by an extremely-excited Michelle Rau, who'd had less sleep than me. Turns out she, with me and Antonia, was taking the same flight to Rome! Awesome! That flight went off without a hitch (thank you!!!), and I got about four hours of sleep on that flight. We got into Rome at 7:45 in the morning, Rome time. So the 31st and the 1st? Pretty much one huge long day for me.

Small tangent...I LOVE INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS. You get food and House and CSI marathons not to mention a free viewing of Secretariat because the guy in front of you is watching it on his laptop with subtitles and is conveniently pointing his computer in my direction. I sat next to this adorable couple that tucked themselves in to sleep. :)

It took a good while to get our baggage and everything, but Antonia and I left for St. John's in a shuttle, where we were staying, and Michelle stayed behind to wait for people. While waiting, we noticed some extremely large pigeons in the train station. I wish I had a picture proving this, but you're going to have to take my word for it. They looked like ducks. And they had a fight.



(The blonde thing next to me is not the pigeon--it's Antonia.)

We hopped off the shuttle, paid the driver with some brand spanking new Euros (which I officially like better than the American dollar), and entered St. John's...which was actually more like a dormitory than anything else. I got a room with Carlyn, my awesome awesome roommate that I met on the Awakening retreat at school. AWESOME. She screamed when I got into the room. It made me happy.

Carlyn only had to take one flight to get to Rome, and her mother had accidentally booked her flight too early, so she was forced to spend the night in the Hilton (haha, terrible, I know) and came to St. John's the next day. We went out for lunch and ended up finding this little pasta/bar/cafe (there are a lot of those in Rome) called something like Salta's? Anyway, we had pasta and water and sat at the TINIEST TABLE EVER stuck in the corner. We had a hard time sitting, but the people were really sweet. Then, we wandered our way back to the dorm and waited it out until our 6pm orientation (or 18:00, I guess...yay for military time!). We spent this time bonding with the other twelve students in our group in the computer lab, trying to get our WiFi set up. The guy helping us out decided to take an hour-long break, so it took a while, and we all got to know each other.

By 6, I was starting to feel tired and a little sick, but, determined to beat the jet lag, I went to the orientation. Dr. Bednarz and Dr. Sebastian gave us a quick talking-to in one of the dorm's built-in classrooms, and then we headed off to Rome. We learned some major streets (which completely went over my head because I'm slow at learning that kind of stuff and was also not feeling well AT ALL) and went to the grocery store, where I had some Twix (I know, I know, but my blood sugar was all over the place) and got yelled at for not having exact change (so yeah, if you go to Rome be sure to break up your fives).

I also need to learn Italian. WHY AM I ONLY FLUENT IN ENGLISH? This problem must be rectified.

I took some pictures, but I wasn't feeling too well, so I wasn't smiling. But the views were breathtaking. I've been here before, and they had the same effect. There's something about a city that's not entirely built out of glass, cement, stainless steel, and refined EVERYTHING. Rome's got a lot of stone and some brick, but there's a good part of nature. It's got a rustic charm, and we were out at sunset, which was lovely.







I was very dizzy, so I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but there were street performers with speakers and a protest against nuclear power (which, by the way, did you know that Germany's pledging to have all its nuclear plants gone by 2020?) and a sunset and a pretty view. Oh, and there was a fountain too, which I always like because sometimes all the stone in Rome gets too much for me. Yay water!



I wish I could say that I went with the group to get gelato after, but I was really, really exhausted. So I went to bed, slept eleven hours, and got up the next day for day two.

Leave comments, guys! I'd love them so so so much. :)