the saga begins

It’s 5 in the morning and I can’t sleep. (This was written last night in my angst.) I’ve been lying awake since 4, and the wind rustling softly against the white lace curtains through a cute little window that overlooks an absolutely picturesque scene is frustrating the hell out of me, so I decided to chill out by writing a bit. Little did I know, however, that my ‘s’ key is starting to crap out on me, something which is sure to annoy me all year long. In any case, I’ll focus on the positive. (It just took me 3 tries to type out positive….NEVERMIND.)

Let me begin by saying that I am absolutely in love with Florence. Now I’m convinced that the half crazy, half quaint little city was calling my name. But I’ll first start by backtracking so that you can really get a feel for my long, perilous journey…

It all started when I set out to board a plane at Denver’s International Airport. But as luck, orange terror alert levels, and inept airport personnel would have it, this task was far more daunting than I had anticipated. Apparently stout, squealy little men with photo badges – he must have been a baggage worker or something – feel entitled to play security line marshal, because some asinine little man felt the need to expound his knowledge throughout the entire process. First he gives me the whole, “Is there a computer in that computer case?” As I stood in line at the conveyer belt as my purse, computer bag, and (gasp!) lap top computer all lay in separate bins, all I could do was smile and nod. But as he supposedly felt the need to recite the entire security sign warning to me, he earned himself a blank stare and nod, rather. I guess I needed his lecture though, because no sooner had I walked past the metal detector than the sneering lady behind the TV monitor snarled at me for not taking my liquids out of my purse (note: they were placed in a separate bag) and placing them in a separate bin. But hey! The squatty son of a bitch standing next to me had to get in on it too, barking so enthusiastically that I had to ask the mean lady to repeat herself, something which I guess was so outlandishly offensive that it merited one of the more hateful stares I’ve received in my day.

I’ll stop complaining and cut to the chase. The airplane ride was long, and I sat next to a man who seemed to be in a thoroughly bad mood the whole time and didn’t even glance my way. No matter – I’m not good at keeping up feigned conversations for nine hours anyway, so it was all good. Plus, I was in an emergency exit row so I had like five feet of leg room. Fast forward to Munich airport: holy sh*t! (I’m censoring these entries because I’m sure my grandparents will be reading them.) That place is a giant f*cking maze!!! (These little stars in place of the vowels in swear words are kind of fun.) Very chique, very new-age, very trendy, and on the whole, quite bland. By the way, Trevor, sorry I didn’t send you your picture, but I was too busy winding my way through an entire glorified labyrinth.

After another hour and a half plane ride over Germany and some of Italy (for the record, Venice looks very dry from a bird’s eye view…maybe it’s just me) I had finally arrived. The taxi ride was everything I had dreamed it would be – we almost got into a few accidents, nearly ran over several pedestrians, and the driver was absolutely delightful as we communicated in broken Italian and English before he went into a yelling tirade at someone on his cell phone. This is not me being sarcastic; I truly reveled in all of it. When I got to my hotel, I pressed the doorbell and was shortly rung in. But as I stepped into the entryway, I quickly realized that I had four flights of stairs to scale with my insanely heavy suitcase, backpack, computer, and “personal item.” Sh*******t. But I was soon greeted by an extremely built lady who helped me haul it all upstairs.

After sleeping for 5 hours, I went out with Molly – the girl I am sharing a room with. It was my first time really seeing the city, and I think I took somewhere around 30 pictures of alleyways. Nevermind that they all looked nearly the same, they were absolutely enchanting to me. We went to a gelateria called “Grom” near the Duomo, and I got Pera and Café gelato. I honestly thought people were just trying to act pretentious and cultured when they told me how amazing the gelato is in Italy, but those bastards really weren’t lying. The Pera was literally the ice cream version of pear. It even had that pear-y crunchiness to it. And, you guessed it, the café really tasted like coffee. But when I say coffee, I don’t mean our typical coffee ice cream, which is reminiscent of our typical non-fat, non-sugar, soy, decaf, whipped cream, Splenda Starbucks creations. This was more like the house blend. The Folgers. This was actual coffee. I was a little taken aback at first, as I am not really a coffee fan, but the café gelato grew on me. Yeah. It did.

Afterwards we walked around a little, got accosted by some gypsies while we sat on the steps of the Duomo, and finally returned home to prepare for dinner. We ended up going to this little restaurant on a street corner by the Duomo (all of my activities thus far are very Duomo-centered), where I ended up getting the Caprese salad and Linguine all’astice (linguine with lobster). Molly and I also split a half liter of the house red wine – the waiter assured us with quite a seductive wink that if we wanted more wine, not to worry…HE would take care of us – and a bottle of water. Man, even the water is good here.

We finally returned home around 10:30 and decided not to go out to “Happy Days” Wednesday at one of the local clubs (two promo guys had hit us up earlier with the invitations), so I decided to get ready for bed and quickly passed out.

But now, here I sit, wide awake and ticked off because I’m probably going to pay for it later in the day when I’m exhausted again. Screw jetlag!

Anyways, I’m meeting up at the center today and later on tonight I meet my host family. I’m sooooo nervous, but so far, my time here has been nothing but perfect, so I’m confident that I really don’t have anything to worry about.