Benvenuti a Firenze!

            Benvenuti a Firenze! After a long and arduous journey, I finally made it here on Wednesday morning. Since then my days have been pretty jam-packed with orientation meetings, activities and paperwork, buying necessities for my stay and spending time with my new host family. So, my apologies for the wait but I have not had any time to write a blog post up until now. Let me catch you up to what’s happened so far. This post will be fairly long because a lot has happened in the first few days. Successive posts will not be as long but likely will be more entertaining. You have been warned!

The journey here was not as smooth as any of us would have hoped. The first leg of the trip was relatively easy. I passed the time on the flight talking to the nice elderly woman sitting next to me on the plane, watching episodes of Friends and How I Met Your Mother (because the movie I wanted to watch was not cooperating), and attempting to sleep. These attempts were thwarted by a very unhappy infant who spent most of the flight shrieking as the young mother tried to calm it down—her efforts were futile. After several hours of listening to a crying baby, one’s patience begins to wear and sympathy dissipates. It’s wrong to think about shaking a child to get it to stop crying, right? I hear it’s bad for one’s complexion…and criminal record. Haha! However, all made it through the flight unharmed. Plus, since it was a Swiss Air flight we were given delicious Swiss chocolate. Win! The second portion of the trip was far more troublesome.

Unfortunately, a labor strike on September 6^th caused all flights into Florence to be delayed or cancelled. Thus, my connecting flight from Zurich to Florence was cancelled—the added stress was not appreciated. I arrived in Zurich at around 10:30 am where I had to pick up my checked luggage and talk to numerous representatives to try to get on the next available flight to Florence, which was no easy feat. Luckily, while everyone in that area of Switzerland speaks German primarily, they were also well versed, if not fluent, in French, Italian and English as well. To put it lightly, I was impressed with them. But, I digress. Unfortunately, the Zurich airport happens to be GIGANTIC. So, when you are lugging all your belongs around the airport for a half hour one way and 15 minutes the other…it gets frustrating. Plus, no one- especially not someone with as little upper body strength as I have- should be carrying around that much luggage. Every muscle in my body was strained, every tendon pulled or overextended. It was not pretty. So between the exorbitant amounts of luggage, the pain, the lack of sleep and my progressing migraine I was not a happy camper! Of course, I forgot my Excedrin migraine too. (It’s always something, right?) So, after being put on standby for the next flight to Florence at 5:45 pm, I spent time carting my luggage to and fro, getting some food, paying for enough internet to let my parents know I am alive and my current situation, trying to get a little sleep without having people stare at me or having my luggage stolen and mainly WAITING. Finally, the time had come to learn my fate—it was boarding time for the 5:45 flight. Unfortunately, I did not make the cut so I had to go speak to yet another member of airport personnel to be booked on the next flight and get a voucher for a hotel room and dinner. I was promptly taken to the Hilton (pictures included) ten minutes from the airport, given a little dinner and immediately passed out in their comfy beds at 8:00 pm Zurich time to get a good night’s sleep before my wake-up call at 4:30 am in preparation for my 7:35 am flight to Florence.  Finally, I made it to Florence. Luckily, I made a friend from my program as we were getting off the plane so we shared a cab and stuck together as we got our bearings.

When we got to our hotel, there was no one to be found—no one to greet us or tell us where to go (as they had promised) and no signs to tell us about the activities for the day. So, after dropping our luggage in the room, we decided to walk to the Syracuse University Florence campus to find out what was going on. Chaos ensued! Once we got there, we quickly found out that everyone else was already there eating lunch and there were several orientation meetings and activities we had already missed. The next few days were jam packed with meetings, photocopying passports and visas for the Permesso di Soggiorno or Permit of Stay, student safety seminars, activating our wireless internet on campus, getting keys to the campus buildings, learning about life in Florence, getting our SIM cards for our phones. All kinds of fun stuff like that! I know what you are thinking. Could this blog post be any more exciting?!!?!?!?!  I will have you know there are a few readers (that means you Mom and Dad) who want to know the nitty-gritty about everything that has gone down thus far.

Anyway, this blog post has become far too long as it is but I promise most of them will not be quite so long… and uninteresting. Information on walking around Firenze, specifically to the Duomo, my classes and my time at the beach with my host family coming soon. Hope you guys will stick around to read the successive installments. Until then…

Ciao!!!

Allie (Alessandra)