The past two days have been one of the greatest learning experiences of my life and I am so excited to see what the rest of the semester has in store.
I boarded a plane at 4:00 pm at O'Hare airport on Thursday and flew to Frankfurt, Germany. That is the longest time I have ever spent on a plane. I passed the time by watching Rock of Ages, attempting to sleep and eating some not-so-terrible airplane food.
Once we landed in Germany we walked for what seemed like miles through the Frankfurt airport to get to our connecting gate. Then we had five hours to wait. We attempted to stay up since it was 8:00 in the morning but our bodies were telling us it was 1:00 am. I tried to stay up and fight the jet lag, but eventually my body succumbed to the dreadful time change and I joined the others in taking a little cat nap in the airport terminal.
At least I got this lovely picture of Germany while boarding the plane!
After that, we took a 50 minute flight to Verona. Flying in was one of the most beautiful views I'd ever seen. We flew over the snow-covered Alps, and I finally felt like I was somewhere special. As we got closer to Verona we could see patchworks of farmlands and vineyards spread out beneath us. After landing and collecting our luggage, we were met by Claudio, our Resident Director. He greeted us with a coach bus and a big orange and blue sign reading "Benvenuto Illini!"
Caludio, along with his 11 year-old-son Pedro, got us onto the bus and dropped us of at our apartments. We are all living with other students in our program, but our apartments are spread throughout the city. I am living with three other U of I girls.
Our apartment is charming and quaint (which translates to small and simple, I know). But we love it and have already started making it "home." I wasn't able to take any pictures of it today but I will post some tomorrow!
After getting settled, we met up with the entire group for dinner. Thank goodness for the kindness of Italian strangers and their broken English, or we might have never found the restaurant. But we did, and the three course meal we enjoyed was delicious!
Walking around the city felt like being in a movie, and I can't wait to continue to explore it! 
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