Journeying and Arriving

I have been in Italy for over 24 hours now! Woo!

To sum up the journey over, the flights over weren’t too bad, though definitely not the best couple of flights to Europe I’ve had. The first flight filled up its overhead space before I got on and made me check my carry on only to have it not arrive at Italy when I got there. (It’s supposed to show up sometime soon-ish so that’s good.) And the second, the eight-hour one, I ended up not sleeping so well on since there was a baby crying the whole time (yes, for eight whole hours). My last flight went extremely well, though, at the terminal, I ended up sitting next to some other students from America. From their conversation I could obviously tell they were studying abroad in Italy, but the few times I tried to introduce myself they seemed uninterested and I overheard one girl say she “couldn’t wait to sleep, shower, and drink.” Oh dear lord, if these were my classmates, this was going to be a long trip.

Luckily, when we landed in Florence, it turned out that they were with an NYU trip…and that a ton of awesome Accademia students were also waiting for the shuttle. Between the jokes, the circle of saying names every time a new student came over, and the ukulele being played, I knew this was my kind of group.

The shuttle ride over to the Villa was beautiful (and we saw a Prada factory? I don’t know…) and, when I first saw Arezzo, I immediately thought, ‘Oh wow that town is so pretty! Oh PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let it be Arezzo.’ Both it and the villa are beautiful and I plan to upload pictures soon.

Not much else to report since today was just orientation (and yesterday I was so jet lagged that exploring, unpacking, and eating were all that I could do). Tomorrow classes begin so I’ll have more to tell soon!