Sunday, June 26, 2011

A little overwhelmed...

Ciao everyone!

First of all, I want to apologize in advance for any typos and anything that is hard to understand.  I am exhausted but completely and utterly happy :)

The last couple days:

On Thursday I headed back to good ole Hays, America where I dropped off my dog :(  and my car.  Friday we packed our vehicle up to head to KC for ONE night.  I emphasize the ONE because I want you to be aware at how much we had packed for this trip.  I know that a 4 year old and a 2 year old require a lot of stuff..but man we had a lot of stuff.  The luggage rack on the top was full, and Ashlyn was buried somewhere in the back between the 2 coolers, 2 bags full of food, and multiple duffle bags per person.  I'm pretty sure I packed less for 6 weeks than they packed for one night.  Now I told you that story because later on I realized that I overpack too... Anyway, we got to Great Wolf Lodge and spend all day swimming and going down the slides.  It was so fun to see Kaleb get so excited over EVERYTHINg.  I mean that kid couldn't contain his excitement.  He was jumping, and running, and laughing..it was a lot of fun to watch.   I am so happy that I got to spend the last day with my family.

Saturday we got up and headed to the airport. My flight out of KC left at 1:15 and there were no problems there.  However as soon as we took off for Chicago, a baby decided it wanted to scream the entire way..not just cry...scream.  I felt so bad for the little guy and for the parents.  They were so apologetic to everyone on the flight and seemed really upset by everything.  My plane landed in Chicago and I made my way to my next flight to Rome.

My flight to Rome was scheduled to depart at 5:05 PM.  We boarded the plane around 4:45 and everything seemed to be going smoothly.  Then we sat..and sat...and sat...and sat..and sat some more.  Turns out there was a problem with one of the engines (comforting right?)  We sat there for about 2 hours before we were finally cleared for take-off.  At this point I was started to get nervous because I was supposed to meet Kate in Rome at 9:15 to take the train to Viterbo...needless to say I didn't get there at 9:15.  So we finally take off and I start to get settled in...Let me set the scene here..  The seats in my flight were set up like so:  AB (isle) CFG (isle) HI.....no idea where D and E went but whatever.  I was in seat G sitting next to a couple in C and F.  They might as well just shared a seat by how close they were sitting to each other.  I'm all for being in love and being happy and showing a little affection every now and then, but this couple acted like high schoolers in the back of a car...sick.  I heard them kissing every couple minutes and at one point she was almost sitting on his lap.  I almost turned and asked them if they were aware that children were on the plane because it was not G rated.  So as I'm trying to drown out the "smooching sounds" of said PDA couple the child in seat H is asking her mom (who is in the isle behind her) a question every 5 seconds and if the mom wouldn't answer right away she would keep asking.  Who knows..maybe she was just trying to keep from watching PDA couple too, but man she had some off the wall questions.  At this point I turned on my ipod and thanked God for headphones and country music (however there were times when I could hear the kissing over my music).  Needless to say, it was a very long 9 hour flight....

So I finally get to Rome airport (which is not in Rome btw) and I find Kate (thank God!).  We ended up meeting a few other girls from our group and decided to wait and take the group transportation with them.  So we sat..and sat..and sat some more until the group flight arrived.  By the time we got on the bus to get to our hotel it was 5:30 (maybe?) pm in Rome which means 10:30 am in Kansas.  At this point I had only slept a couple hours on the plane and it was not a very good sleep.  My back hurt, my head hurt, but I was so happy to be here.  We walked a couple blocks to our bus with all of our luggage..which by the way I think I win for most luggage in the group (and we all know who I get my overpacking gene from)  We took a two hour bus ride to the hotel which I slept all but maybe 5 minutes of and finally arrived in Viterbo.

We got checked in and I was able to take a shower- which was AMAZING!  This shower might be the smallest shower I have ever stood in.  I couldn't even wash my hair without my elbows hitting the doors..needless to say my legs didn't get shaved today.

After showering we walked through town and went to a Pizzeria where we ate pizza topped with french fries and hot dogs (and yeah they did that just to mock us)..but it was fun.  We got to see part of the town which I think is really neat.  It is a really small, old town and all the building are old, but it has so much history and culture that will be so cool to learn about.  I didn't want to take any pictures tonight because I just wanted to take everything in.  I want to have time to take good pictures of all the cool fountains and of course the view of the Palace (which is BEAUTIFUL).  Tomorrow we head to Napoli (Naples) which has the "only" pizza in the world..I mean I'm sure it doesn't compare to pizza shuttle at 2am, but I will at least give it a shot.  We start our south of Italy field tour which lasts 5 days and we get to travel and see a lot.  I can't wait to get started traveling and exploring everything.  We decided tonight that we are just going to be tired for the next 6 weeks so after we get some real sleep tonight we are going non-stop for 6 weeks and I can't wait!  I know it will go by fast and I don't want to waste any time.  So on that note..I'm signing off!

Sorry for the novel..I guess I just had a lot to write about..and it's only the first day!!  I'm off to finally get some real sleep, even though it's only 4:30 in Kansas..it is definitely bed time here!

Buona notte! (goodnight!)

1 comment:

  1. Glad to hear you made it okay! Can't wait for the pictures!

    ReplyDelete