Day One

September 6, 2010 10:35am Rome Time (Feels like 4:35am Georgia Time)

I have arrived. Well really I’ve been here for 4 hours now but you understand my point. After months of anticipation I can’t believe I’m sitting in the Rome airport waiting on my connecting flight to Florence where I will begin one of the most exciting times of my life. Even here as I sit in Italy, it hasn’t quite hit me. The reality of the situation is just so great that it’ll probably hit me in December when I’m actually leaving. I feel like I’m living in someone else’s shoes. I keep having to tap my face to make sure I’m not dreaming (and to induce blood flow in my face to keep me awake against this jet lag).

Speaking of jet lag, my body is definitely rebelling against me right now. I have the sweats and my head is pounding. I’m not hungry but in the back of my head I feel a bit nauseous. I’m doing everything I can just to keep my eyelids open. On the flight over I had the privilege of sitting behind two Italian ladies who definitely didn’t spare the assumption of Italians liking to put on a show. Needless to say, my TV screen and lap desk in front of me went through many bouts of shakes due to their over-exaggerated laughter and conversation and if I turned up the volume in my headphones any louder I would have busted my eardrums. I luckily did find about an hour of quiet time where I managed to get some sleep, but other than that I just sat there frustrated beyond belief at my luck.

Still, life went on and even my lack of sleep couldn’t damper the huge smile on my face as I walked down the steps from the airplane onto Roman grounds. And to lighten my mood even more, God blessed me with getting to watch the sun rise. It can’t get much better than starting off my trip with a better welcoming gesture than a sun rise in Roma.

Since my flight landed at the crack of dawn, we were some of the first passengers in the airport. Nevertheless, as I walked into the different gate areas, the wonderful smell of coffee and pastries and all things good that are Italian overwhelmed me. I looked around at all the cafés and took in all these beautiful, wonderful looking breakfast items (I haven’t yet learned the names of all these goodies). As tempting as they all were I refrained from any purchases because after all I am a poor, starving college student now.

Because my next flight was after noon, it wasn’t yet posted on the Departures board as to what gate I needed to go to so I found the waiting area where a couple of other groups of people were sitting as well. I found a nice row of chairs and settled down. I got out my phone and my laptop and also to my fortunate luck, neither were working. For some reason my phone wasn’t “roaming”, the internet here was not free and my debit cards have not yet been activated for international usage. So I found myself worrying “how in the world am I going to let my mom know I made it safely. She’ll be up late worrying and if I don’t contact her before I get to Florence (which wouldn’t be until 18 hours after my departure from Atlanta). I went on a search and found a phone where I could make a collect call and foot the bill to daddy’s wallet- that’s what it’s for anyways right? At first I was afraid the call didn’t work but eventually it did and I talked to my mom and John. Whew. Problem number one of this trip solved.

After my collect call, I went back to the waiting area and situated my bags so that I could lie down on them and sleep a little. At first my nerves were eating at me so much that I couldn’t really relax so I pulled out my MP3 player and watched The Fantastic Four. After that I fell asleep for about an hour and woke up and to my surprise the airport had become pretty busy. I decided I should probably get a move on to my gate (even though I still had 3 hours until take-off) and began my trek through the Rome airport. I didn’t realize how big this airport is until I finally arrived at B19 sweating like I had just run outside. Much to my not surprise I was the first one there so I set up camp again and decided this time to finally get a start on this blog which brings me to my present time now.

It is now two hours until boarding and a few other passengers have arrived. A few “Hispanic” (I’m pretty sure Mexican) men are having some conversation that I can barely pick out words from. An elderly couple whom I can’t quite pick out what ethnicity are sitting over in the corner. Three middle aged Italian women are sitting across from me. I haven’t figure out there story yet but I imagine they took a girls weekend like my mom and her girl friends do sometimes. Wouldn’t it be neat if that were actually true?

So there’s not much to report anymore at this point other than, I miss air-conditioning.