Arrival!

Ciao Tutti!

I have officially arrived in Italy! It feels a little strange, walking off the plane, seeing a ton of signs in italian and kind of understanding most of them. Me and my roommate (still working on names, ill get there) dropped our stuff off and went for a walk around our hotel to try to fight off jet lag. its strange knowing that at 4.30 yesterday morning, I was waking up in reno and now its 18.25 the next day and I'm in a foreign country, thousands of miles away from home, listening to tons of other languages being spoken and very few of them being anything remotely like English (Ive heard Turkish, Giapponese, Italian (of course, Romanian...), all very interesting and very different. But before i delve too deeply into Torino, ill talk more about the journey across the ocean.

It all started at about 4.00 or 4.30 when I woke up to get ready for the airport. Molly and I met my parents at the airport at about 5.00 and we sat around chatting for a while. it was kinda strange knowing that i wouldnt see anybody familiars face for about a month (when molly makes the voyage to Scotland). Though it was sad to say good by to my family for six months, I know its going to be pretty awesome to see them again.

Last View of Reno for 6 months

 And, after the previously mentioned technical issues, i made it to San Francisco to play the hurry up and wait game. I finally made it through the ticket counter and security and then was here updating this while waiting some more. So off to the side and a little below this is the picture of the lines at SFO. It was pretty crazy.  I still had yet to difinitively meet anybody from USAC and was getting anxious to do so. I thought i had seen some but nobody seemed to want to start the conversation.

Looking down toward home

So we finally board the plane in SFO, which was a double decker plane, freakin massive. I was in seat 41d, which was an inside isle seat so i didn't get much in the way of pictures while on that flight. It was a 11 hour flight from SFO to Frankfurt and it was kind of interesting. I know that, for those who fly frequently this may not be news, but i found the screen that shows where you are, how fast, altitude... very fascinating. We flew over chico (which the Chico kids seemed to love/find funny), Boise, Kalispell, Saskatoon, Greenland, Scotland (right over Ediburgh supposedly, but the clouds were too thick to see through and i was in the aisle so i dunno what it looks like yet. I got seated next to a larger gentleman and he kinda was a space hog on the plane but oh well. I tried to sleep on the plane, knowing that a sleepless flight would yield in a worse case of jet lag, the large man encroaching on my seat and a hoard of crying babies made the flight impossible for me to sleep on. I maybe got 20 minutes of sleep, which was no where near enough. We arrived in frankfurt and still, not many of the USAC kids were conversing, except for those who sat next to one another. I worked my way through a remarkably lax Frankfurt security (compared to SFO that is) and began to wander my way though the airport. I had no idea where i was going and that made for an interesting adventure but it all worked out in the end. I ended up going on some secret agent style underground tunnel with Brazil posters everywhere to get to terminal A. all the USAC kids finally sat down and began to converse, asking general questions like whats your major, how old are you, where are you from. These questions are the proverbial bread and butter for conversation starters in the next few days/weeks (however long it takes to get used to it)

No line to check in...

 So we go get some German beer and chat for a while and then we begin the process of boarding our plane. a seemingly simple exercise to accomplish right? Nope, instead of a traditional take you from the check in, down the rack and of yo go, nope, its more, get through the doors, walk to an hidden highway and drive for 20 minutes to get to the plane. then we got to walk onto the plane in a driving rain. that was an adventure as well!


The flight from Frankfurt to Torino was fairly uneventful which was nice. It was very cool, though, flying over the Alps and seeing the majestically reaching toward the plane... very cool.

Line to check after i made it through

So tomorrow i move into the program housing that's in Torino so i have no idea what till have as far as time goes for blogging and uploading pictures but i do know that I'm going to need some rest. Tomorrow, or in the next blog, ill try to cover more of Torino and things i have learned about Torino or Italy that i may not have known without living here for six months. Until then, Ciao ciao (and enjoy the pictures included on the bottom!

Inside Porta Nuova

Sunset in Torino

Sunset in Torino

It was interesting having two things to go through to board the plane

Secret agent tunnel in Frankfurt