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Mi madre and me
Here is a picture of my mom and I before I embarked! It has been a long day(s) for me. I don’t know if I should name this blog day I or day 2 because with the flights and all, it was like a seamless transition. All I can say is that I have been awake (not including small bits of dozing) for nearly 25 hours. With that being said, let’s get started.
First is first, I got up real early this morning to be at the airport at 7:40 A.M.—which is 2 hours before I take off. My mom and I thought that we had to be there 2 hours early, so as we showed up at the American Airlines gate at 7:38, we thought we were right on time. However, it turns out we only needed to be 45 minutes early, so we woke up way earlier than we had to. That did not help my sleep total for the trip.
After saying bye to my mom like a good little son, I entered the intimidating world of airport security for the first time alone. I did ok. I worked my way to the gate (hooray for the train system!) and I managed to get on my flight to
The plane o' doom
Here is most of the plane that I rode to Madrid from Chicago. I couldn't fit the whole plane in Chicago O’Hare without any troubles.
On the flight, I did see one thing that caught my interest: in the seat pocket, the air-sickness back said, “For motion discomfort”. Now the first thing that ran through my mind is, “What? This is an air-sickness bag!” It took me a couple seconds to realize that’s what the bag meant by “for motion discomfort,” and then I got to thinking how stupid that was. Why was there a euphemism for puking? I mean, seriously, if you had nausea on an airplane and you had to puke, would you really care whether or not the back offended you by saying “puke”? If the decisions were left to me, I would have wrote “PUKE IN HERE!!!!!” on the bag just to get the point across fast enough before it was all over the seat back instead of the bag. I know that sounds gross, but it’s more logical and I thought I should mention that.
After my 4 hour layover in Chicago, I managed to get on my flight to Madrid, Spain without a hitch. I’m glad to say that the puke bag on this flight didn’t say anything at all, which is
Madrid Airport
So. Awesome. Go there someday. almost better than “PUKE IN HERE!!!!!” Another thing I was disappointed in and rejoiced about was the dinner they served. The “entrée” was chicken. If you know anything about our school trip to Spain and France two summers ago, you’d know that literally almost every meal we were served on that tour was…. chicken. So, here I am, with the first meal I’m eating off of American soil being…. chicken. That is the disappointing part. The part I rejoiced about was that it was actually pretty good! And never before in my whole entire life had I been so excited to actually find a bone in my meal—because I knew it was real then! Plus the dessert was cheesecake, and that was pretty good.
The rest of my flight consisted of 2 episodes of House, reading Anthony Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange”, working on my video slideshow for the class in Italy, and snoozing. Even breakfast was pretty good, with a Kit-Kat bar included! Before I knew it, I was landing in Madrid.
Madrid has a beautiful airport by the way. But I got frustrated when there were signs in English everywhere. I took many years of Spanish and
View from my room
The view from my room is pretty cool eh? of course the airport had to ruin my fun by throwing English in there! Everybody talks to me in English too… like the flight attendants who were just speaking Spanish a second ago to the guy in front of me. I got to thinking why they knew I was American, and using my thoughts and what I’ve read online before I left, I took some pictures and made another little video for ya.
So I board my last flight (really wimpy—only 2 hours compared to the 9 for my Chicago-Madrid flight) and at last I land in Venice. Of course, my bag was almost the last to come out onto the baggage claim belt so by that time I was freaking out. But once it came, I exited and there was Mr. and Mrs. Sasso, standing there with a sign that said “Stan DeVore” on it! I felt really cool. Like I was in the movies or something.
Anyways, we drove home to Rovigo and we three had a blast trying to figure out what the heck each other were saying the whole time (they were speaking broken English, and I wasn’t attempting Italian at all). Paolo and his sister Claudia were at school (they go to school on Saturdays! But their day is only 8 AM to 1 PM.) but I finally met them at home. We had lunch (which I think was chicken… just sayin. Maybe pork. I don’t feel like asking right now) and the whole time I was just listening to them chatter back and forth in Italian and hearing them argue on the pronunciation of the plural form of the word “dishes” (Elena-the mom- was right, just for the record). I also found out they all love Queen—especially Bohemian Rhapsody—and the musical Grease. Huh. Interesting to say the least.
Now that lunch is over, they’re all set on me taking a nap or something (which I refuse to do lest I get a bad case of jet lag). So here I am, on day 1 (or 2?) of my Italian adventure.
New words I learned today: forchetta (fork), coltella (knife), and cucchiaio (spoon). I feel like I always learn those words first.
So that’s all for today! (or yesterday. Whatever. It’s the 28th here so we’ll go with that)
Ciao!
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Grandma B
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Glad you made it!
Just checked your blog for Kim. She said to tell you "Glad you made it with no problems and didn't need the "puke bag". I just signed up for your blog so will follow your trip. Love and miss you, Grandma B