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Buongiorno!
So my whole adventure started as soon as I arrived at the Venice Marco Polo Airport on Saturday afternoon, January 20th. I was feeling about 10 feet tall during my travels because I had a smooth flight from Chicago to Zurich, Switzerland, and an even smoother 45 minute flight to Venice. It was great. BUT as soon as I landed and got off of the plane, I quickly sank down to feeling 2 feet tall. I realized I was in a foreign country. It had begun.
To make it worse, I couldn't find my friend Jessica who I was supposed to meet there. Surely enough, however, after a good 15 minutes she showed up, and immediately I felt a sense of relief. We caught the bus together, and arrived in Venice 30 minutes later. When we got off the bus, I had a map of where the hotel was, so I felt very prepared and was confident in my ability to get us there. Little did I know that for 45 minutes we were walking in the complete opposite direction of where we were SUPPOSED to go. It probably wouldn't have been so bad, except for one minor detail: Although I had brought only 2 small bags, Jessica, on the other hand, had brought 4...including a 50 pound duffel bag that she could not carry. She had resorted to dragging it on across the sidewalk...and the bag was tearing, let alone the attention we were bringing to ourselves from the locals. Uncomfortable and embarassing? I would say thats an understatement. Finally, I offered to carry her bag because I was scared it was going to break open and we would have a real problem on our hands. I wasn't kidding when I said the bag weighed 50 pounds. I could barely carry it, and when I did, it would only last 3 minutes at most before I had to take a break. So between my shoulders aching, the sweat beating down our faces and bodies, and trying to communicate with six different locals in order to get directions, it was an adventure to say the least.
After a good hour and a half of pathetic, distinctive "American" traveling, we finally arrived to our hotel. It was perfect. Quaint, traditional, and what I would believe to very cultural. There were 2 other girls staying with us for the night, and when we all showed up, we found that there were even more people from our program that were staying in the same hotel. So we showered (which was much needed), and headed out with 8 other people from the program to a pizzeria for dinner. The food was amazing, even though I don't usually eat pizza. Not to mention, the wine was even better.
Afterwards, we decided to go to a bar to see what the nightlife was like with the locals. It was a lot of fun, and it was cool because everyone hangs out in the alleyways, and we were surrounded by Italians. I loved it!
The next day we had to catch our train to Bassano Del Grappa in order to catch a bus to Paderno Del Grappa, where our school is at. We woke up at 6:45, thinking that it was 7:45. We didn't find out about the time difference until we realized we were an hour early for our train. Luckily, there was an earlier train, and it turned out the 8 students we hung out with the night before were on the same train as well. One of the funniest images that sticks out in my head during this day was being with 12 American students dragging around enough luggage for a whole football team up and down stairs, and through cobblestones and all sorts of terrains. The looks we got were priceless...especially when we arrived in Bassano and no one spoke a WORD of English. I will say, it was really fun and interesting trying to order lunch. However, I decided to suck it up, and try my best to communicate. Eventually, the waiter and I made progress, and before I knew it, I was enjoying some tortellini and an iced tea.
It was then that I realized that there is going to be a lot of personal growth as well as unpredictable adventures in the next 3 1/2 months.
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