It's been a very long week. After staying up until 6 am Wednesday morning before my flight, I woke up at 7:30 am and left my house at 8:15 am. Finally, I arrived at the airport after making a few stops with my mom who drove me. My flight to Amsterdam left Seattle-Tacoma at 12:55 pm but was delayed nearly an hour due to debris on the taxi way and an error in the crew manifest paperwork. While on the plane, I tried unsuccessfully to sleep and watched the movie Precious. The nice flight attendants also welcomed me to some extra snacks in the galley to the aft of the aircraft. I was lucky enough to have a window seat and took some pictures of the ice bergs in the North Atlantic, Greenland, the snow in Iceland, Scotland, the Straight of Dover, and the North Sea.
Accompanied by Sarah, Yuting, and Erik, we arrived in Amsterdam sleepless and late for our connection to Rome on KLM. Bryan was also supposed to be on our flight, but, unfortunately he was in an automobile accident on his way to the airport in Seattle. After rushing through customs and hurrying to our gate, we barely made the flight to Rome. The KLM flight to Rome was short and sweet and the first taste of Europe...the languages were Dutch and English and there were also many Italians on the plane.
We landed in Rome on Thursday around 11:55 am, on time. After changing currency (for a horrible rate at Travelex) and walking downstairs with the group, we sat waiting for i baggagli until we realized that they were not going to be coming off the carousel. So, we all lost our bags between Amsterdam and Rome and had a very interesting time at the Alitalia baggage claim service window. Long story short we walked out of Rome Fiumicino bagless and tired. We caught a cab together and were able to only pay 10 Euros each on our way to Piazza del Biscione where the Rome Center is located. Our cab ride was certainly memorable and a very terse yet valuable introduction to the insanity of driving in Italy. It was quite the experience.
We spent some time trying to figure out how to open the doors of the Rome Center building which were conspicuously Italian and have gigantic bolts on them. The big door is called the portone and the name really suits it. After checking in and looking around, we walked over to the apartment and got settled briefly and did the necessary facebook check. We attended a short introductory meeting, went to the cell phone store, went to the soap store, and went to the grocery store (where I was royally ripped off on a box of Special K "Fruti Rossi" and "Latte Fresco"). I fell asleep around 6 o'clock after arriving back from the store and got up briefly during the night.
