Flights and Day One meet & greet

After a 2+ hour delay on my first flight, I made it to all of my other connections and met up with Marianna. My plane itinerary was: SFO -> Boston; Boston -> Zurich; Zurich -> Florence. We got in to Florence, and our luggage made it just fine (which is what I was most worried about for some reason) and we got a taxi and made our way to the hostel. Got there just in time, because while I was at the counter, Sarah and Amanda walked in so we all checked in together and made our way to the 5th floor where our room is. It's pretty nice, and I think we can call it home for 3 weeks. Our window has access to the balcony terrace, and though there's a door down the hall for the terrace, I'm sure we'll just be crawling out the window. We can see the Duomo to the right of our room, Brunelleschi's large dome peeking up through all of the other city buildings. It's amazing!

After getting settled, I took a shower and got ready. After we were all done, we made our way to the CSU center, and we thought we were late, so we ran part of the way, and I felt like I needed another shower! We sat and met our professors and got more information about the course, and also got our museum pass. After all that, we then walked together (in the rain) to the restaurant we were having dinner at - I failed to get the name. Our first course was a little pasta dish that was molto bene! Then second course was a chicken of some sort with wonderful cheese on top, and some potatoes and spinach. For dessert we had this sort of mint, cherry, citrus tiramisu. There were so many different flavors every time I took another bite. After dessert, everyone at our table was almost passed out on the table since most of us had just arrived earlier in the day. On our way back to the hostel, Amanda wanted some gelato so we made a quick stop. I have no idea what flavor it was, but it was really good.

I've gotten maybe 4 hours of sleep tonight since I'm not used to the time change yet.. It's 3:30am here, and I'm groggy but not enough to sleep. I'm hoping I'll be able to fall back asleep after a little computer time, because I really need rest. Tomorrow our first stop is Fiesole, and then our first lecture is in the afternoon. I hope I don't fall asleep in class...

Did I mention that it's raining?! And the one thing I didn't pack was an umbrella. So I'll likely be buying one at one of the markets tomorrow.

I'll try to start posting pictures later this week!