Mission Phase 1 Complete

Greetings all from Rome! I almost can't believe it but somehow I made it here in one piece, my luggage did not get lost, I found my hostel on the first night, and now I am completely moved into my apartment on the Campo de Fiori. What a wild ride. I thought I'd take just a moment to give you the brief run-down on how things went.

My first flight was to Vancouver, B.C. It was delayed a little over an hour, but I eventually got on a prop-jet "puddle jumper" for a 58 minute smooth flight. Nothing too exciting. It was nice to see the Vancouver airport again, having seen it briefly when Carin and I went on that Alaskan cruise a couple of years ago.

My second flight was -- hold your breath (I know I did) -- 9 hours and 45 minutes long from Vancouver, B.C. to London's Heathrowe airport. The wildest thing about that (other than the length) is that we took a northern route that took us over upper Canada, the Hudson Bay, Greenland and the North Atlantic. Translate: the sun never really went down. I could always see light out the window and since we were travelling toward the next day, I landed in London 17 hours after I took off. Excitingly, I was served 2 meals on the plane as well. You just can't get that kind of service from an American airline (I flew Air Canada).

London was pretty interesting. At least I can say I've been to the airport. I unfortunatley had a 5 hour layover there and to make matters worse, my luggage was not transferred to my next flight because I changed carriers (I flew British Air to Rome). That meant I had to go through customs (which was a breeze), pick up my luggage, exit back to the checkin area, check in and re-check my luggage. To boot, British Air does not let you check your luggage until 2 1/2 hours before your flight, so I had to hang outside security for 2 hours waiting until I could check my luggage. I just went outside and enjoyed some fresh air and gray London sky.

The best part of waiting in Heathrow was the people:

If you can't tell, that's everyone in the airport staring at whatever television they could find watching Australia play Brazil in the World Cup. Talk about your phenomena that people in the U.S. barely participate in. You can see the TV on the left side of this pic, a player from Brazil sporting his canary yellow shirt. I like the guy to the left of the TV scratching his head. I'm not sure if he's looking at the game or at the board trying to figure out where his flight is going.

The other cool thing about London's airport is that the gate assignments for the flights are very organic. You don't know until 40 minutes until your flight which gate you are supposed to be at. That means there are these huge lounges throughout the airport (seen above) in which people wait until they actually go to their gate, where they only wait 15 minutes or so before boarding. I thought it was cool.

Finally, my plane came and I had a smooth 2 hour flight to Rome. Since I landed in the dark I didn't get to really see much. After picking up my baggage (all the while panicking it was going to get lost) I quickly caught a train to the city center and walked to my hostle. My room was a 4 bedroom with 1 guy from New Zealand and 2 women from Chicago in it. You won't see many co-ed hostles in the U.S. that's for sure. The room had a tiny bathroom and the smallest shower I've ever used in my life...literally about 30" square. It was so tight I had problems putting my hands above my head to wash my hair. Not for the clausterphobics in the family, that's for sure.

Today I caught a city bus (only €1!!) from the hostle to the Campo and FINALLY found the school, picked up my keys and walked up 3 very tall floors to move into my apartment. What a relief. I spent the next 45 minutes or so unpacking and making the room "mine" (eventually to become "ours" when Carin gets there) and relaxing.

So to review, I took a car, 3 planes, a train, a bus and a lot of walking to get here. It was a great trip though and I'm really excited to be here. I've already walked up to the Piazza Navona (just a few blocks away). Its amazing to finally see some of the places I've studied about for so long now. Tonight many of us are meeting for dinner. In the morning we'll all go through a brief "orientation" and we'll start getting to work. WOO HOO! Thanks for reading all the way to the end of this post...its been a busy couple of days for sure! Much, much more to come...