September 7th, 2017 (my 22nd birthday)
I headed to Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts to catch my 10:45pm flight to Florence, Italy. My boyfriend, Ryan, dropped me off at the airport, where we had to say our final good bye before parting ways for three months, and to say that I felt a wind of emotions pass over me is an understatement. As soon as I passed through those automatic sliding doors I felt tears stream down my cheeks. They were not completely sad tears though. Although I was sad to leave Ryan, I was also extremely excited and anxious for what was to come in the next three months. I had been waiting years for this opportunity and it was finally here.
I felt overwhelmed while I stood in the airport hallway waiting for my friend Haley to meet me. Haley and I both went to Merrimack College and we planned to travel together to take some of the stress off of our shoulders that comes with traveling alone. The 20 minutes that took her to meet me felt like the longest 20 minutes of my life. I did not know what to think about what was to come. A part of me wanted to turn around and not go through with the adventure but an even bigger part of me knew that this feeling would pass. As soon as Haley arrived and we made it through security and to our gate, I began to feel better and more calm about the experience. The flights were on time and everything went smoothly. We landed in Florence, Italy around 4pm on September 8th and met with the leader of our CAPA Florence Educational Program, Lorenzo. He assigned us to a taxi and we were on our way to our apartment. When we arrived at our apartment we met with our landlords, who spoke no english, and they tried to explain everything to us in our apartment. We tried our best to communicate with them but really could not understand anything so we just nodded our heads and went along with it because they are cute little elderly people.
On our first night in Florence, Haley and I were both exhausted and starving so we ventured out to try and find some place to eat. We ended up going to Reverse(a small bar/restaurant not far from our apartment) for dinner and ordered our first Italian margherita pizza. For a restaurant that doesn’t even specialize in pizza, it was still very good and we could immediately tell the difference between the mozzarella cheese here and back home. It is a lot better here. Apparently we stuck out like sore thumbs though because Santi(one of the staff members) came up to us and asked if we were studying abroad. When we told him yes, he gave us all kinds of information about the nightlife and we learned that there was a pretty sweet deal at Reverse every night, which is 2 shots and 2 drinks for only 10 euro!! Afterwards we just went home, unpacked our suitcases and settled in bed for the night. We still did not know who our roommates were because they were not in their room when we arrived so we anxiously waited until the morning to introduce ourselves.
Europe Through My Lens 