BUONGIORNO!

Cioa! It is currently 7:45 here in Macerata, Italy!
To say that yesterday was an adventure would be an understatement...
My parents drove me to Ohare airport and after going through the usual security process my flight left at 4:00pm. It was a nine hour flight and just my luck, I had to sit right next to a kid who held a barf bag to his mouth for the last two hours. However, we also got to sit next to this guy who only spoke Italian and laughed at us everytime we had to get our pocket italian books out. After finally arriving in Rome, we connected flight to Ancona which was only about a 45 minute flight. When we arrived, we collected our luggage and were on our way. We arrived at the Ancona train station and you should have seen us try to read the time tables... YIKES. Finally, we just went to thicket booth and asked them for tickets to Macerata. When I asked the lady if it was the 11:55 train (in English of course...) she looked at me like I was a fool and wrote down on a piece of paper "11:55????" Once our tickets were purchased, we had to carry our suitcases up and down stairs to get to where we needed to be to catch our train. Let me just tell you, carrying a 50lb suitcase, a 20lb backpack, and a purse up and down stairs and on to trains is rather difficult. Maybe I should have done some push-ups this summer to prepare myself...
     Welcome to our first dumb American moment: We didn't realize that on our train tickets it said we had to be in a certain train car and we had assigned seats, so..naturally, we just hopped on anywhere. Picture six of us on one full train car with all of our luggage and it not being where we are supposed to be. We finally asked someone about our tickets and he told us what we were really supposed to do. Thank goodness it was only a 25 minute train ride to Citanova Marche where we changed trains. Another 25 minutes on a different train, a small little taxi ride, and we arrived in MACERATA!!
     This is the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my whole life. Macerata is a walled in city on top of a hill and everything is brick and cobblestone, and if you look out to the horizon it is decorated with mountains. 
     Yesterday when we arrived, we had orientation. We were shown the main parts of the city and our two guest teachers and Filberto (our director) talked about information we should know. Sadly, me and the 5 other people I traveled with were only focused on how jet lagged we were. Some of us even dozed off during the orientation and listened to the constant growling of our stomachs. We then got our apartment assignments! I am rooming with two girls named Brittany and Shannon! We get to move in on Wednesday, but for now we are all living in a hostel. Finally, orientation was over and we got to go eat! We also found out that it was one of the girls birthday, so a big group of us went out and had a glass of wine to celebrate! It was only 10:00pm, but we all decided it was time to go to sleep.
     PS: Thanks Dad for telling me to bring my pillow pet! Haha! The pillows here sucked, but I sure was comfortable!