A Small Wanderer

More greetings from Roma!

Ok, now you get to hear the full saga of my adventures this weekend.

First and foremost, the Steelers rock. So here's a question for Steelers fans: Why can't we come up with some team paraphanalia that's actually, I dunno, intimidating? We have towels and now a tree. Woo. Tree. Scary. Is there any other football team with less intimidating imagery or paraphanalia? Really.

So my first flight yesterday was scheduled to leave Pittsburgh at 3ish. We boarded on time, but then sat at the gate for about 45 minutes doing nothing. I'm not sure why we were sitting there, I'm sure someone somewhere had a reason for it, but there wasn't any reason apparent to me. So we left about 45 minutes late. The flight itself was fairly uneventful, but the leaving 45 minutes late was really very bad, for this reason. The way my itenerary was originally set up, I had an hour layover at JFK before the flight to Rome left. That was making me nervous, because I didn't think an hour was enough time to make a connecting flight without having to run, and I've never been to JFK before. The Pittsburgh flight made up some time in flight somehow, but the delay still left me with significantly under an hour to make my connecting flight. Not only did we land late but the airline staff then kept us on the plane for about 15 minutes just waiting around.
Well, the flight attendants reassured me, saying "Oh, it's no problem, your departure gate at JFK is only 10 away from your arrival gate. All you have to do is walk down the hall." Now, when they said "walk down the hall", I pictured a hallway like Pittsburgh's gates are arranged in hallways. Well. This hallway was probably about 1/4 mile long including a great many twists, turns, and random staircases. I walked into JFK after they finally let us deboard the Pittsburgh flight, and less than 10 feet into the door I hear "Final boarding call, Delta flight such-and-such to Rome". I booked it across a mile or so of JFK airport (I still have no idea what the place looks like; I haven't actually seen it, I've just run through it.) I made the plan, one of the last ones on. The plane then sat for more than an hour doing nothing. An annoucnement was made that they were "loading luggage" but, as I found out later, they were actually UNLOADING luggage. The plane must have been too heavy.

Didn't find that out until this morning though. The flight itself wasn't horrible. Since I was about the last one on the plane, there was no room in the overhead storage bins for me, so I had to squeeze my backpack and my duffel bag under the seat in front of me. Of course, they didn't fit, so I had to spend the whole flight (plus the hour or so sitting at the gate) with my legs cramped in an odd position around my bags. I ended up sitting next to a priest (not a bad seat partner at all for an 8 hour trip) who was going to Rome for a 25 year reunion with his seminary class. He let me say evening prayer with him and was telling me about all the good places to go in Rome and the best times to go to the Vatican (if only my short-term memory was a bit better...). I didn't get his name, but I know that his parish is in whatever diocese encompasses Cape Cod. There were at least three priests on the plane, the three I knew about all being a part of this reunion. I found out later today that one of my roommates ended up on the same flight sitting next to a different priest. That was kind of cool. I knitted about half a scarf on the flight. It's a scarf just like the one I made my sister over break, a skinny dropped-stitch scarf, only it'll be longer. I think I impressed (or at least amused) several people with my knitting. I didn't sleep well at all when I tried, between the bags under my seat and the fact that I had an aisle seat. I think I had just fallen asleep when they served breakfast.

Anyways, so we finally arrive in Rome, an hour late, and lo and behold, my luggage is missing. Go figure. Something had to go wrong with my trip. I think the plane was too heavy (it was very full) and they had to take some of the heavier luggage off. Maybe it was just coincidence that the only people who had bags not complete the trip were study abroad students with connecting flights into JFK. Whatever. My bags will be delivered to the school tomorrow. I'm a bit annoyed, but not overly worried about it.

Tomorrow starts orientation.

We saw sheep driving from the Airport into Rome.

Pizza places are really cool here.

Almost EVERY apartment has a balcony.

The moon over Rome is gorgeous.

It's pretty cool. I would upload a picture, but alas, I left my camera in my other bag.

posted by Stacey @ 6:45 PM