Greetings from Italy

Ciao!

That's right, I am in Italy!!! How insane is that? Completely. Incredibly. Amazingly. I'll try to tell you all about my journey, but I don't know how frequently I'll be on blogging! I plan on at least journaling everyday to keep track of what I've done! (otherwise, I know I will forget things. )

So I set out on this incredible adventure early Thursday morning. I woke up at 6 o'clock (after getting about three hours of sleep) and was on my way out of Colorado Springs by 8! My plane left (a little late, thanks Delta) at 10:55 and I arrived in Atlanta around 3. At the airport I met up with the other members of my HUF group, grabbed some lupper, and then boarded the plane for Paris around 5:30. The plane left somewhere around 6:40 pm and we arrived in Paris about 8:30 am on Friday. Boy was that a fun ride. ;) I sat next to one of the girls in my group that I still don't really know, she was on my right, and a frenchman was on my left. On the far right (we were in a row of four) was another frenchman who apparently had a very bad cough. The frenchy on my left was a nice man, and a VERY heavy sleeper. We talked once, briefly, and smiled at each other. When it was time to try and sleep on the plane, I had very little luck. However, my little friend did not. He fell asleep, because he got very comfortable. How did he get so comfortable, you ask? Well, he put his feet where my feet were supposed to go, and then curled over into a little ball on my side. Wellllll. Needless to say I wasn't very comfortable. I pulled my feet up onto my seat with me and tried to sleep, ha! Then, the inevitable time came when I had to go to the bathroom. So I gently shook my little friend's shoulder so I could get out. Well. He didn't wake up. So I tried again with a little more force. Yeah, still nothing. So I coughed AND shook his shoulder. He sat up a little straighter and continued to sleep. The two people to my right were also sleeping, and I really didn't want to have to wake up both of them. So, I just stood up on my seat and jumped over. Got an applause from my fellow HUF buddies David and William, cause they are awesome and were laughing at my misfortune. Had to jump back into my seat, too. Got maybe 30 minutes of sleep total on that plane ride, but it wasn't too bad.
My next flight was about an hour and a half from Paris to Florence, and that one I got a half hour to an hour of sleep on. It was splendid.
Once we arrived in Florence we sat at the airport for another hour and a half, we had to wait for some people's luggage to arrive and for two of the boys because they missed their second flight due to delays of their first flight.
Next we took a bus to Scandicci, and then walked up the hill to our home away from home. Let me just say, living in a villa that was made in 1492 is basically awesome. It's so cool!!! My room is the best of the girls room, (I may or may not be biased), because there are only four girls in it instead of six, and we have two awesome windows with incredible views.
When we first arrived we had a quick little meet-and-greet with the staff at the Villa and then we got our room assignments. We got some... well, interesting instructions from the lovely Mona :) haha two of the first things she told us were: After you shower, clean out your own hair with a Kleenex or something, AND if you have to do a number 2, "line the runway" with some toilet paper, or make sure you use the brush afterwards. hehe. After that we took our stuff up to our rooms and started unpacking and getting settled in. Then we had dinner, (I think, sadly I can't remember much from yesterday!) and it was delicious spaghetti and bread and fruit and meats and vegetables. It was wonderful!
Then we cleaned up the tables, and got ready for our meeting. We learned a lot, I'm sure, I just don't remember it all ;) We learned about some student work positions available, and learned what we were going to do today. Besides that... I couldn't tell you much. ha! (Keep it mind I'd been up for 28+ hours at this time on about 4 hours of sleep total).
I got on facebook, put up some pictures, and tried to stay awake a while longer.
Today we got up. Got ready. Had some breakfast. Then started orientation.
Orientation lasted for a long time. Like.. five hours. But we went through a lot of information about a lot of different things. I have so far learned how to sing two songs in Italian! I still don't really know much about my classes or anything, but hopefully I'll get that figured out before Monday. We had lunch here at the villa, then got ready for the Scandicci Walk. We walked from the villa into town and then all around town. We looked at shops and saw the library, went to a bar to order a cappuccino in Italian, and then walked around some more and saw town hall and a bunch of other stuff. Including a castle. Pretty awesome.
Then we had an hour to shop. I went to the market with Amanda, Jenna, Kyle, William, and Jordan, but it was closing up for the evening so we didn't stay for very long. We met for dinner at 6 and had these sandwich taco things... The place was packed and there was only one person working when we got there, so Kyle (from HUF, the worker, not the student) hopped behind the counter and started helping her out. We ate our food, and some of the Italians (either in high school or college) who were in there put on one of their iPods and were playing all of their American music (like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and a bunch more) All the guys (both Italian and American) were singing along. It was a good time :)
Since I was in group 1, I was one of the first people done eating, so I was one of the first four people home. (me, Amanda, Jordan and Kyle). So I checked/updated Facebook and this little blog. Then it was time for our PARTY!!
It was a WELCOME TO ITALY/GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER party and it was SO much fun! hahaha.. Mona did her "little bunny foo foo" and it was so funny. We played a bunch of games, including The Name Game. In this game it started with four people in the middle, and a bunch of people sitting in a circle. Each of the four people had to run over to someone, yell at them "WHAT'S YOUR NAME?!" to which the person would scream their name at them, then the one who asked would dance around in a circle while chanting their name eight times. Then, the one who told them their name would stand in front of that person (you made a train) and run over to someone else and ask (yelling, of course) what their name was. With four teams going, it was a mess and a lot of fun!
I had a great time, and I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone in my group more!!

Until next time my blog followers! (hehe)
Ciao!

Kortney Alacyn

CIAO!!