Jk. I'l probably be spending the majority of my free time browsing museums and art galleries. But if you haven't watched that movie, you should do that- ASAP. It's amazing.
Well, I guess I'll start from the beginning of my traveling adventures!
First- a major coincidence! One of my brother's old teammates and his older sister (Harry and Sarah), who live in and go to school in Florence, were on all my same flights. Even better, we all had seats assigned together. It was a hilarious coincidence. It was so good to have someone help me through this, though! Even just talking about everything made me feel so much more at ease. Plus, they fly this route several times a year so I just followed them through all the airport lines and security checks.
My flight left from Houston at 4:15 pm (right on time!!), and got to Paris at approx. 8:00 am (with the time change). I barely got sleep. It was so uncomfortable all I did was really sit there and watch movies and eat when they brought me food to keep my body in check with the time changing. (I'm sorry I don't even really have airplane window pictures because it was pitch black night time. But the starts… wow, they looked amazing from up so high. It was so beautiful- I even recognized a few constellations.)
When we got to Paris, we had to get our passports stamped and go through security. And I got stopped/pulled for a check/pat down/etc. Like really, I have French name, people! What am I going to do? After that mumbo jumbo we stopped for coffee, water, and snacks. It was just a quick layover, and we boarded our next flight to Florence at 10 am. I got in to Florence just after noon. We didn't wait long for our bags at all, and when we walked out of the baggage claim area my group for school was waiting. I split from Sarah and Harry and went out the bus to go to school.
We packed the bus and drove to campus. Tiny streets filled with lots of tiny cars… it was actually scary to watch the driver navigate through everything! Once we got to campus we had to fill out some more paperwork and turn in stuff for immigration, get orientation packets and our IDs. After that I went and unpacked and met some lovely girls who live on my floor! And also my two roommates. Our room is huge! Well, at leased compared to some of the others. Mainly it's because there are three of us in one room. We also have our bathroom, which is always a plus. Some of the smaller rooms have to the floor's communal bathrooms. But we're some of the lucky ones!
There are only 8 of us on this hall/floor, and I am so excited to get to know everyone better! We all even have some classes together.
We went to dinner at the Villa next door to ours, and I'm still not 100% on Euro time yet. Obviously. So I snacked on a small salad and an apple. After dinner we ventured through the building to find our workout room. It's okay… it's really small. Only two treadmills, an elliptical, a stair master, a bow flex, and some weights. But this campus is SO beautiful, I can't wait go running through it! (I am thinking about doing some races back at home in the fall, so might as well get some world-wide training in!).
Thanks for tuning in! I'll be back soon :)
-W
