I think our night only lasted for about four hours. It’s really weird how that works. The overhead monitors showed us where the plane was on various different sizes of maps, our altitude, the outside temperature, the amount of time until we would arrive, the local time at our destination, and how far away we were. It also showed where it was day and where it was night on the world, which was kinda neat. We pretty much just charged right on through the night and, thus, it only really lasted for what I’m guessing was about four hours. They turned off all the lights for it and showed a couple of movies. First was the second National Treasure movie and the other…well, I don’t really remember what that one was called. I watched part of National Treasure, but mainly used the sound to try to lull me to sleep. Really, I didn’t get much sleep on this flight. I tried, there’s no denying that, but planes just aren’t that comfortable.

I did try to sleep in Munich, though. When my mom went through Germany years ago when she was visiting Kendra’s mom in France they didn’t give her a stamp on her passport, but Sarah and I got stamps. Thus, I was happy. We still had our luggage with us, though, since we were taking them as carry-on’s so we didn’t leave the airport. Instead, we just went through security and found our gate. At this point, even the thought of food made me nauseous. I blame the meals we got on the international flight. They weren’t really that bad, but after eating them both I just…I dunno, everything aside from little snack foods made me feel sick. So I just munched on some of the snacks I brought and didn’t eat anything else. Then I did homework. Yes, homework in Munich. Glorious isn’t it? After that, though, I started falling asleep so I went with the flow of the crowd around me and curled up on the very uncomfortable bench and tried to take a nap. I kept waking up and being in pain, though. Every fifteen minutes or half an hour I would regain consciousness and try to get back to sleep only to realize how incredibly uncomfortable I was. Then I’d have to sit up for a while until I started to fall asleep again and then went back to trying to lay down. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was actually kind of horrible and it didn’t help any that, when we got on the plane for Rome after seven godforsaken hours, they served…something. I have no idea what it was but it was hot, probably tasted pretty good to some people, and the smell of it made me want to vomit. It smelled good, it really did, but, like I said, unless it was some sort of dry snack food it made me feel awful. I can’t really remember that flight. I think I was dehydrated, which made me more susceptible to motion sickness, so that didn’t help much, but I was so exhausted that I just kept drifting in and out of sleep for the whole, what was it, hour and a half?

I can’t even remember my first view of Rome. I was in an aisle seat, though, so it’s not like I could easily see out the window. Anyway, we spent a goodly amount of time in the airport, which mainly consisted of standing around waiting for the other group members to get their luggage. I was partly delirious during this time, though, but Cynthia—Dr. White, the professor in charge of the whole trip—warned us that this was the time when things started disappearing, so I was pretty paranoid about that, too. Nothing disappeared, though. Some people’s luggage was still back in Denver, however, and the airline actually asked them if they wanted them to send it back to Tucson. What the hell?! They’re in Rome with NOTHING and the airline wants to send their bags back to Tucson?!

Sorry, little bit of a rant there. It didn’t have anything to do with me, but you know how it works when someone else is having issues and then their frustration kind of transfers to everyone else around them.

In any case, we didn’t get any stamp to prove that we’ve actually been to Italy, so that was mildly disappointing, but oh well. Then we stood around waiting for everyone to show up next to Vigo Ludo, our tour guide who told us to just call him Vig/Vic—I never actually figured this out until after I got back and talked to Kendra, but for him the “c” and the “g” sounds are probably identical, thus the reason everyone in my group was calling him “Vic” when I swore he was “Vig.” He amused me, though. He said things like “bloody” and “jolly good” and I later found out that his accent sounded so strange because, yes, he was partially raised in England. I think he spent his earlier years in Italy, so his accent is a mixture of both (Northern?) Italian and British.

And then we finally left the airport long after the sun had set and met Carlo, our bus driver. I really didn’t want to pull out my camera at that point so I didn’t even make any attempts to start taking pictures, but we saw part of the old city walls, drove over the Tiber River, saw some statues and saw the top of some cathedral in the Vatican. Remember that I was exhausted at this point and that, for that very reason, this was written far in the future from when it actually happened, so obviously I’m not going to be able to remember some of the names of the things that we saw.
Anyway, we got to our hotel where we found out we’d have to be downstairs for dinner at a certain point—I was thoroughly unhappy about this because of the whole food=nausea thing and the fact that I just wanted to sleep. The elevators were tiny, the electronic keys had issues working, we found out that there was a slot next to the door that we had to keep the key in to get the lights to work, and the inside of our room looked like something taken directly out of the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland. Not that I’m complaining, it was pretty awesome looking. I just wish that it hadn’t induced thoughts of ghosts popped out of the gigantic mirror encompassing the entire wall behind our beds and strangling us in the middle of the night.

As for dinner, at this point, I have no idea who we ate with our first night, but I’d be willing to bet two of them were either Louis and her daughter Monica and/or Christine and her niece Madeline. They served us pasta first, obviously, and then what they told us was veal. Now, I may be a meat eater and love it, but I can certainly relate to vegetarians. Why? I have issues eating baby animals. I figured that it was already dead, though, and the least I could do was try it, so I did.

It tasted like pork. And, apparently, it was too light in color to look anything like veal, so at this point I’m not sure if they were being entirely honest with us, but back then I still thought the remains of a dead baby were sitting on my plate. I managed to eat about half of the first slice until I started feeling pretty upset about it, so I just gave up and decided it was enough that I tried it. Like hell I was eating the rest of it.

But after that I finally got to sleep, so all was joyous and wonderful. On a completely random note, the toilets here are weird. Namely because of the fact that it takes a great deal of looking to find the elusive and very well-camouflaged button to make them flush.


The view outside our window. I have no idea what it is but it's neat looking and that's all that really matters. xD