Week 1-Italy

The Beginning 

What a week we have had so far... we went from being stuck at the airport for 3 hours because of a stolen backpack to being locked in an apartment for 14 hours overnight to buying drinks legally for the first time ever.

This has been a crazy experience so far and we are only a few days in. I can only imagine what the next 6 weeks will be like. I am hoping some of the experiences will be even more crazy than the first few days but who knows. This all still feels like a vacation to me at this moment because we have only been here for 3 days. I keep hearing the words culture shock thrown around, but I have not felt a lick of it so far and I think it is because I still feel like I am on vacation. In the next few weeks I think that it will hit a little harder once I realize that this is home for a decent period of time. Even then I know that it will end so I'm not sure how much of a shock it will be for me. It could be because I lived in China for a while and it doesn't get a whole lot more shocking than that in my opinion. Then I didn't even know when I was going to leave, here I know no matter what I only have to deal with it for 7 weeks.

Onto the actual Italian stuff. We started the trip off strong by getting what I would like to call a "unique" experience on the airplane ride over here. It started off like any normal plane ride just me dreading the 10 hours it would take to get there. About an hour into the flight the people in front of us start talking which I understand it passes the time especially since it seemed like they knew each other in some way, shape, or form. Well, let me tell you by the end of the flight these people had me hating them. They were all moving about back and forth between the front and the back of the plane throughout the entire flight, screaming at the top of their lungs while doing it. That is when this lady decided to take the seat next to me since Mr. Cochran needed to use the bathroom. She literally crawled over me to get into the seat. She just sat there chatting away like nothing was wrong. Luckily, however, the timing worked out by the time Mr. Cochran got back to the seat she decided to get up. I don't know if she saw him, got yelled at, or what I did not care one bit. I just wanted to go back to bed. I am really glad that I slept most of the way because if I had to put up with that the entire 10-hour flight I may have killed someone. I guess that was my first instance of "culture shock" right there. Even though in my opinion their behavior did not reflect that of the millions of other Italians.

Now we are on the ground, all is well, I'm in Italy and we are about to go home on the bus. That's when we all stop to go to the bathroom and the professor's bag gets stolen. Now at the time most of the students had no clue what happened. We had just loaded all of our belongings onto the bus and were ready to go sitting down and everything. We were stuck at the airport for what seemed like an eternity. Then 2-3 hours passed and we were on our way. It was annoying but that is just because we had just landed and everyone was a little grumpy at that point. I just wanted to get home see where I was living and who I was living with. Those things happen though. I was mad at the time but really that was just a culmination of various things. It was what it was we are all here safe now so I got over it basically as soon as the bus started to move.

Once we got to Montepulciano it was all fun and games. We went exploring around the town seeing what was around. Then a few of the other guys and I decided that we had waited long enough. It was time to buy our first beer legally. It was a weird feeling but it was awesome. We did not go crazy or anything like that just had one then went to dinner then to bed since class started and we were all exhausted. The next night was more of the same. We had class then went exploring had dinner and did not really do anything crazy. The next night is a completely different story though. Once again no one planned for it to be a really interesting night we went and grabbed a beer then we went up to the room to do something and then we heard the doorbell multiple times. We were curious went down and Dom couldn't get it. We sat there for around an hour trying to get it to work and eventually gave up. That is when Ken and honestly I am not even sure who all was there came to try and open the door. They could not get it to open either and told us to just open a bottle of wine and relax(which we were more than happy to do). Then morning came we were rescued and the day went by nice and smooth.

Me desperately trying to open the door

My birthday also happened while we were over here and that was pretty cool. I appreciate everyone singing and all the birthday wishes. Not many people can say they got to celebrate their birthday in Italy... besides the Italians of course.