First two days

I've been given an opportunity many students would go to extended lengths to experience. I have been able to go to Florence, Italy to help write about the city and the experiences many students have when studying abroad in at Harding's campus. This is a class that twenty-two of us have been selected to help write or document the city. Our university is looking at our group as an experiment for further similar classes in the future. So much is to be said about our journey and the success of our class.

Our first day, Thursday March 4, began with our group meeting at 7 a.m. in order to make our flight at 10. We traveled from Searcy to Little Rock and from there flew to Chicago. Not much happened on Thursday other than flying and sitting on planes. Our second flight left at 3:40 p.m. from Chicago and traveled to Frankfurt, Germany. The flight was not bad but crowed and very stuffy. It was the nicest international flight I've been on but also was the most crowed. It was a little overwhelming with the melting pot of cultures we were able to experience with our seats back and tray-tables up. I think the most unique feature of the flight to Frankfurt was the restrooms. Many planes (formally thought all) have very tiny uncomfortable restrooms, but this was not the case. The restrooms on our flight were down below the regular cabin,accessed from a stair case in the galley. I was caught off guard when I used the stairs but I think the stairs will stick with me for a while.

Our flight was late getting into Germany and we were forced to delay our second flight because we were only given 30 minutes to get off the plane, go through passport check and security before reaching our gate. We were not forced to find a different flight however, we just delayed the flight we were supposed to be flying. It was very surprising to see an airline wait for 22 passengers but somehow one of our 'guides' was able to have our flight wait on the tarmac for us to be bused to. We were not the most like on that flight. The flight itself was very uneventful but we had finally arrived.

With just under five hours of sleep for a little over 50 hours, my first day, Friday, on the job was a bit of a blur. Once we arrived at the Bible school, our house for the week, we traveled to the university owned Villa. It was quite the hike up to the school for most of our group but we made it. On a hill just outside of the city, the villa is on the middle of a hill surrounded by olive vineyards as far as the eye can see. The walk was long but the view was worth it.

Friday was a long day but it seemed to fly. I was tired so many of the tasks that would be easy normally became quests. My walking began to be more clumsy and holding in a laugh became nearly impossible. We went to the villa, explored Florence for a short time and went to an authentic pizza place with enough food to feed a small army. The evening was uneventful with thoughts of sleep because the day was dragging but the best cure for jet lag is waiting to sleep. So we waited and it was 10 when I finally crashed following the longest day of our trip.