Arriving In Florence

Just finished a lot of walking, so now I'm resting my legs in the apartment and drinking a lot of water. I figured now was a good time to write about the past day.

After Daddy left LAX, I went through security pretty painlessly and found the gate, where USC friend Megan was waiting. Boarding began maybe 20 minutes after I got there, and I got my window seat towards the front of the plane. The plane itself was pretty nifty- it had little screens on the back of the seats to play movies/TV shows, and it had a pretty nifty unfolding tray thingy so you didn't have to unfold the whole thing if you were just putting down a cup of water.

Some Cloud Hoppers for a snack

Anyway, the actual flight itself was kind of miserable. I tried to pass time by watching movies- first X-Men: Apocalypse (which it turns out was a pretty dumb movie, and I couldn't really hear the sound, and the subtitles were in German), then a movie called Assassination Classroom: Graduation (which is a very odd flick about a classroom of Japanese teenagers who are trying to kill their teacher, a giant yellow alien octopus-- Karen should be familiar with this one). After getting bored of movies, I tried taking out my laptop to use the wifi, but I could only send free postcards. The laptop also must have hit something on route to the plane, because a chunk of plastic was taken out of a corner and one side of the screen was detached. I got the screen reconnected with some tape, but it looks like one USB port is out of commission. Otherwise the computer still works.

The one downside of sitting next to the window is that if you want to use the bathroom, you have to keep climbing over the other two people close to the aisle. This turned out to be unfortunate because I got really gassy on the plane, and it became a moral dilemma about whether to do your best and hold it in or to climb over the other passengers for the third time. It also makes it very hard to sleep. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and did the climb, but I still wasn't able to sleep the whole flight. 

In the bathroom I learned that the German word for "flush" is shülung, which I like because that's the sound it makes.

The vegetarian dinner included a little cup of salad, a bread roll, a brownie, and a tin container of 2 ravioli and limp vegetables. I appended a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Breakfast consisted of a cup of fruit, a bread roll, and what I think were mushroom blintzes. The cup of fruit was good.

Towards the end of the flight I watched half of the movie The Lobster, which I remembered Leah mentioning. It's a surreal movie to begin with, but even more so at 4am.

A very tired me, USC Megan, and the ceiling of the Frankfurt airport.

Once we landed in Frankfurt, we were redirected to a bus which took us to customs. When I got to the front, the German guy behind the counter looked at my visa, had a discussion in German with another guy next to him, and then told me I had "very good forms", and that they had to turn back lots of Americans because they didn't have visas, but mine were good. I said that's great and then moved on to another bus, which took us to the terminal to wait for the plane to Florence. It was there that I learned the German word for "gate, which is einfahrt and also my new favorite German word.

The plane to Florence was much smaller than the other Lufthansa plane, which was good because it meant one fewer person to climb over to use the bathroom. However, I'm glad I got the window seat because the view over Italy was beautiful.

 

Skies over Florence

We landed in Florence at around 6pm Florence time (it was supposed to be 5pm, but the flight was delayed), and at baggage claim we met up with two other USC people who had arrived at around the same time. The baggage carousel went in very fast circles, which meant both of us had to grab 50lb suitcases with lightning speed. Luckily, there were lots of people gathered around and I got some help with hoisting the suitcase up and onto the ground. Once it was rolling, the suitcase was very manageable.

From there we found the line for the taxi and waited a bit for one to arrive. All of us and our luggage fit in one taxi, and we were off to SACI. Upon arriving there, a guy named Luca gave us a packet of information and keys to the apartment, which it turns out I'm sharing with the 5 other USC people. We then got into another taxi and were driven to the apartment. To get in there's a nondescript door along the street, and then some stone stairs that lead up to the actual apartment, which also has stone floors, no carpets at all. It's also really big! The rooms are split into doubles, and there's a kitchen area and a living room. Each bedroom has it's own bathroom, and the beds have covers and a pillow. The kitchen also has its own set of cooking supplies, utensils, and plates and stuff, though I think a lot of it was left over from prior students. Should I get my own set of utensils and plates? Also, my computer doesn't seem to want to recognize the wifi here, so I've been using my phone as a USB hotspot as per David's advice.

Apartment kitchen

Apartment living room area and the couch I'm sitting on.

By then it was around 8:30pm or so, and I was equal parts hungry and tired. Tiredness won out and I was out for a couple hours. I kept on waking up in the middle of the night, and I had a weird dream about my suitcase having too many pockets.

Today I woke up at 7 and had a peanut butter bar for breakfast. I left with the rest of the USC people at 8:30 and walked to SACI for orientation. I'd say there are about fifty students there, maybe a bit more, and mostly girls for some reason. The SACI people led us through filling out a permit to stay in Italy, and then gave us a powerpoint presentation about the going-ons at SACI. Then we got a walking tour of the school and the surrounding points of interest in the city. That ended at about 1pm, and from there the USC people and I walked to the Mercato Centrale, where I split a pizza with USC person Tiffany. The pizza kinda tasted like a regular United States pizza, so maybe it was a tourist pizza, but in any case it was tasty. I also picked up a free canoli sample, so that became dessert. With all that walking though I was reallllly thirsty, and the water vendors most know that tourists get hot and thirsty because water cost 1.50 euros. I asked for a cup of water at a coffee shop and got an itty bitty cup of water, but it was free and cold.

A street near the apartment.

Following lunch we walked back to the apartment, and I chugged a cup of water and sat down to type this up and just now renew a library book.

Pizza for lunch

These pastries looked really good.

Florence itself is fun to walk through. The streets are very narrow, and when the chubby cars go by you have to kind of hug the building if you don't want to get hit. There's a lot of people on motorcycles and bikes, and you can hear Italian conversations going on everywhere, which I guess I should have expected but still sounds very funny. There's a gelateria and ristorante every block, and lots and lots of tourists, also on every block.

The plan for the next time I go out are to buy a reusable water bottle and figure out how I'm going to feed myself for three months. Please advise!

The lighting was crummy, but here's me in a public library with a view out the window of il duomo. It looks just like the pictures!