PART 1: THE FLIGHT

Buongiorno, once again! I am now able to blog aobut my personal experiences so far--to speak modestly, it has been an exciting and interesting week. My last entry was more of the different aspects of their culture that initally gave me some "shock" when I first arrived. Since then, I have become more (only slightly, there is so much more to learn) aware of why those observations are so, amongst many others. However, I will save that for a future entry, and for now, let you know how and what I have been doing.My flight left on January 11 from the Chicago O'Hare airport for Amsterdam, where I boarded onto a connecting flight to Rome. This trip would be the second time that I have ever flown and luckily everything went smoothly except for a few scares at O'Hare. (At this point, Mom, you should probably stop reading, I donàt want to start giving you any visible grey hairs, everything worked out in the end.) Anyways, continuing on, at O'Hare I went through the normal processes with luggage drop-off and moved through the line of travelers toward the security checkpoint. As I approached the conveyer belt for the x-ray machine, I placed my carry-on suitcase, laptop, and shoes onto it and stepped through the metal detector to its right. At that moment, my suitcase had set off the warning light and a security official was required to perform a search for the source of the signal. As he was digging through my items (a week's worth of undergarments, clothes, socks, books, and the sort), the official found that it had been the lip gloss in my make-up bag that had caused the trouble. Looking up and grabbing a quart-sized sandwich bag he asked, "Do you need this?"

"Not necessarily." I shrugged.

"What do you think about the war in Iraq?"

With that question I provided him with a concise response (my plane was leaving in 30 minutes!), but he followed with a very long, detailed opinion. When he was finished, he finally sealed the bag and handed it over. "Here is your make-up, if you wouldnàt have given me your opinion I would have just thrown this away. Good luck and continue on with your flight."Perhaps he was new, but I doubt he was allowed to make such subjective remarks to travelers; security officials are often stoic and terse if any conversation is present at all. In any case, I looked down to gather my belongings and proceeded toward the gate for my flight. I pulled off my suitcase, tossed my shoes onto the floor, and grabbed... my laptop was missing. Immediately, my stomach dropped and my face turned hot as I thought of someone carrying it away as I listened to the security official. How embarrassing would it be to call my parents after they had just lectured me on responsibility before I left? This trip was a new level of independence and I couldn't lose a valuable item within the first hour. (yikes!) Fortunately, my planets must have been aligned with homeland security (or something weird like that), because after a long fifteen minutes they had recovered it. Apparently, it had not been claimed quickly enough and so as the security official had been carrying on about his opinion on Iraq, others had picked up my laptop and stored it in a secured room. I took a very deep breath after that and perhaps I should have done some Tai Qi; and yes, in the airport. I was taught a very valuable lesson in maintaining "street smarts", and hope that I will pay more attention in the future. Otherwise, I could very well regret it in Florence!

The second "scare" happened to Michael, which you read about in his travel blog. I will give you a hint, it involved a "speeding wallet", short for a truck quickly moving away with one.
Aside from those two incidence, the flight and the connecting one to Rome went very well. It took approximately 6.5 hours to travel from Chicago to Amsterdam and about 2 from Amsterdam to Rome. Once in Rome, we took a three hour bus ride into Florence. To my surprise, the view driving in was underwhelming, lacking the usual skyscape of the Duomo and cathedrals that typically characterizes the city from the hilltops of its entrance. Now that I am more familiar iwth the city, I realize that we took a back way around the hills and on the opposite side of the river which avoids the traffic surrounding such tourist attractions. When we did arrive in the heart of the city, taxis took us to our apartment and we met with our landlords. The next day, we were given an orientation through the city and settled into our apartments.