Flying to Rome, an experience in itself

My trip to Rome began last thursday, Jan. 7th. We got to the airport around 1:45pm. Luckily I check in and checked my bags downstairs, which no else in the airport apparently knew about because it took less than five minutes. After that I headed up to security. I said goodbye to mom and dad and then got on line to go through security. After about a half hour I was through and at the gate. I was one of the only students to be there that early, but at least I was there. Slowly everyone started to show up and before we knew it we were boarding.

I boarded and found my seat. Being that I was the beginning of the alphabet I was one of the only people who wasn't surrounded by Loyola people. I had a very nice, but also large gentleman who slept very loudly throughout the flight. My seat was the center of the center section, easily the most uncomfortable seat possible. Earlier in the week I read a post by a friend who left for Ireland had tried the beef on the plane and it wasn't exactly the best. When dinner rolled around I figured that I would be daring and try the beef for myself to see what all the hype was about... He was right, it was awful, mushy, grey, but at least there was rice. Other than that the flight was pretty uneventful, I fell in and out of consciousness a few times, definitely no substantial sleep.

After eight and a half hours we arrived at Rome's Fiumicino/ Leonardo da Vinci airport. After being caged for almost nine hours we were all ready to go although none of us knew how to get where we were going. Luckily there was a tram, that took us from the terminal to passport control. Once we got there we were forced into four lines for not only our plane but probably about two other ones, easily a few hundred people. After about 20 minutes and a little line jumping we made it through. We picked up our bags met with Dr. Dawson (our program director who was flying in from Atlanta) and headed out to customs. I'm not completely sure what customs is, but here it was just a sliding door that separated baggage claim from the outside. We then met Aurora, our program's cultural assistant. She took us to the bus and before we knew it we were in Italy on our way to Rome.