While I know I'm a little late on the whole travel blog thing, it's better to start later than never, right? So here we go.

Last Sunday, June 30th (my best friend's 21st birthday, actually), I left my house at 11am for Tampa International Airport to start my study abroad journey to Roma, Italia. After multiple attempts to say goodbye to my parents and making it through customs with a couple hours to spare I met up with a girl from my study abroad program that I met earlier this summer via our facebook group. Thankfully, we got along from the start because little did we know how important this factor would be later that day. About 50 minutes before our flight was supposed to take off, we heard that dreadful call over the intercom that our flight was delayed. Fortunately, at first, it was only delayed by a few minutes and we would still make our connecting flight to Rome in Philidelphia. However, minutes turned into hours and we were on our way back to the ticket counter to exchange our flight for a different one. Luckily we were able to get on another flight that same day to London and then to Rome from there. Unfortunately though, that put our arrival time in Rome to almost 12 hours past our original time.

We made phone calls to parents and program directors and then waited anxiously for our new flight. If there were any silver linings to this situation, it had to have been that our new flight on British Airways was much more "luxurious" than our original flight on U.S. Air would have been. And thankfully for me, all of the waiting and anxiousness of this "detour" made my fear of long flights drift away :).

Once we arrived in Gatwick Airport in London, we then had to take a hour long train ride to Heathrow for our connecting flight. A train ride that cost 25 extra euro! (around $38 thanks to exchange rates and debit use charges). I must say though, I was pretty exited to "see" London. Although, I only saw the London country side--which was beautiful by the way-- but, I still think it's pretty neat that I have not one, but now TWO stamps on my passport!

After about 7 long hours of waiting in Heathrow airport (with no wifi) we were on our way to Rome. Let me just remind you that by this point we had been up for over 24 hours by the time our flight left, minus the two hours I slept on the 6 hour plane ride to London. Finally though, we made it to Rome! Rome FCO airport was nowhere near as nice as Tampa or London's and the stressful-ness of this whole debachle finally started to kick in.

We had no way of getting in contact with anyone. Not our parents, not anyone from the program, no one. We finally just had to use an international pay phone to get a hold of someone from our program to find out where we needed to meet them to get our keys to our apartment. This payphone later charged $42 to my account for a 2 minute phone call... Thankfully, my dad got this outrageous charge disputed with the bank :).

Around 8:30pm (central European time) we made it to the restaurant where the entire study abroad group was waiting on their desert after eating, what I was told, a delicious 4 course authentic Italian meal. The waiter soon greeted Miranda and I and suggested two entre's to choose from (we picked the first) and our food was out momentarily. As we sat at the table, jet-lagged, and quite honestly, completely exhausted, we got to know some of the people from our program. At the table we met Jackie, Laurel, Sarah-Margaret, Carla, Daniella and Linett. (I would be lying if I told you I remembered their names the next day..shh..) Everyone seemed nice and excited, but equally as tired.

After dinner we were taken to our separate apartments where I then met my roommates! Although I was completely exhausted it was nice to finally be in Rome (Trastevere, to be exact, since that's where my apartment is) and meet who I am living with for [now] the next 5 weeks. Only Sarah, Jordan, and Ashley were here. Lourianne was still stuck at the airport trying to figure out her [much more confusing and stressful than mine] plane delay and luggage situation--- it has now been exactly one week and one day since she got here and her luggage is still not here.

Once introductions were made and travel stories were exchanged, I finally got settled into my single room in my Trastevere apartment. True to form, I naturally took almost a hour to decide whether I wanted to room in the single or in the other double. I'm thankful I chose the single, though. By the time I was showered, unpacked, caught up with my parents and Andrew, I headed to bed (approximately 38 hours after I woke up the previous day).

In one day I had never been so thankful to get on a plane, be in a place that wasn't even my home, or climb into an extra small twin sized bed.

I promise not every post will be this long, but honestly, let's be real here... I can almost guarantee that I will have other posts like this, but in the future I will try to keep it short. Over the next few days I will be playing catch up, but I should be all caught up soon. I can't wait to share the rest of my first week with you! and my incredible weekend... :)

Fino alla prossimo volta!

Cassidy