August 24th, Finally!

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Today's finally the day! I left for the airport around 7:30, with a stop at Walmart to buy a camera last minute. My first flight of the day was a quick flight to New York City to meet up with my friends Kelly and Kristy. My weight limit for my checked bags was 50 pounds, my bags ended up weighing 49.5 and 50.0 pounds exactly! After saying goodbye to my parents (miss you!) I bought my last Dunkin Donuts iced coffee and got on the flight and was in New York in no time where I met up with my friends and another girl from Bentley named Alyssa. We had some time to kill in the airport so we ate and got some snacks for the flight. We took off around 5 for a 6 hour flight, but luckily there were plenty of movies to choose from on the flight and we were served dinner. We arrived in Dublin around 11, but it was 5 AM there! We were all very tired but had to wait another 2 hours to get on our flight to Rome. Finally we were able to board the flight and it was another 3 hours. Once we landed in Rome we all waited for our multiple bags and somehow managed to transport them to our meeting spot. We all boarded the bus and me and Kelly fell asleep as soon as the bus started driving. Unfortunately, we woke up around an hour later in a gas station parking lot in 100 degree heat. We ended up waiting in an Italian gas station for around 4 hours while they attempted to fix the bus, it was a long day to say the least.

We arrived in Tuscania around 5 to the Hotel Tuscania, a cute family run hotel. Me and Kelly roomed together and we had a couple of hours to unpack and rest in our luxurious room, just kidding. The room is very small and there is less than 6 inches in between mine and Kelly's bed, there is no AC and the refrigerator is broken. However, the view from our window is unbelievable and makes up for it (for the most part). Tuscania is a small town in Tuscany of about only 4,000 people. My college, LDM, has a small university branch here. There are 30 of us in the Bentley program and we are the only Americans in the entire town. We are only here for a week, but it is definitely enough time. We are the only college that attends this orientation program because Bentley thought that it would be good for us to experience the Italian culture before we get to the very Americanized city of Florence. We actually have to communicate in Italian here, which is difficult because I only know how to say about 10 words total, but it is definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

Around 7 we went out to dinner as a group with our advisor and she gave us a small tour of Tuscania just so we could somewhat figure out our way around. We arrived at dinner and were served wine, bread, delicious pasta, chicken and potatoes, and dessert, all paid for by LDM. It was delicious and a great first Italian meal. Afterwards we had of staying out a little later (we have a curfew of 1 pm) except we were exhausted and came home and fell asleep within minutes. Long day of traveling, but well worth it!

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