Well the first part of my journey wasn't as bad as expected. I had to ride 2 hours in a car to get to Dulles airport (and it's safe to say that wasn't the most exciting thing one can do in the world). Then I was in the airport for two hours, which also wasn't very exciting. This was all followed by my least favorite part of the trip, which was the 8 hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany where I have to wait a few hours for my transfer to Florence.
All together it was 12 hours of travel and it wasn't even that bad. The car ride wasn't that bad because my parents talked to me the whole time. The airport thing wasn't too bad either because I never just sat around and did nothing. I have a huge fear of missing my flight but I got to the airport the standard of two hours early (because it was an international flight) and managed to get to my gate in only 45 minutes. So there is where someone that knows me would believe this to be torture for me. I have an hour and fifteen minutes before my plane takes off and nothing to do. I didn't want to use my cell phone because I wanted to save the battery for the flight (eight hours is a long time), and I had no desire to sit and read the books I had because I was going to be sitting and keeping to myself for the next eight hours. Luckily, another Mount St. Mary's student was at the gate when I got there; even better than were three of us on the same flight! So I sat and talked to John-Paul for almost the whole time. For anyone who doesn't know John-Paul (and I'm certainly no expert) he is a rather extrodinary guy. He went to college when he was 16 (he was homeschooled) and he has a strong desire to be a priest. He is from Harrisburg, and he taught himself Italian and is nearly fluent in it (hopefully he can help me). I learned from John-Paul that he has never actually been on a plane which completely blew my mind at the time, but now I see that that isn't quite as crazy as I originally thought. I also spoke to Kathleen who is another Mount student who will be traveling in Florence with John-Paul and I. It turns out John-Paul sat in the row right behind me, and Kathleen didn't sit to far behind either.
John-Paul can apparently can sleep in cars and planned on sleeping the whole time on the plane. I like to pride myself on being able to sleep anywhere; however, I'm gonna be honest I can't sleep in cars and I can't sleep in planes. I don't know what it is but I just can't sleep sitting up, and I really hate sleeping when I know other people are awake around me, especially when it's people I don't know , which happens on a plane (I feel like this makes me sound paranoid but I'm not too worried about it). I knew those going into the flight that I wasn't going to sleep and I tried to prepare myself. It's a red eye flight so I left at 5:50 p.m. Eastern time and arrive in Germany at like 8 A.M. German time. Which isn't too great. So it's kind of like 8 A.M. and I haven't really slept at all but it's whateves.
The plane ride really wasn't that bad. There wasn't many people on it. I had an aisle seat, there was an empty middle seat next to me and then there was a guy who had a window seat. So we had plenty of room. John-Paul was the same way but he had a window seat. The guy that sat in the aisle seat in his row was from UCLA and was going to study abroad in Prague. In case anyone reading this didn't know I've been to Prague for a weekend last year and lived it. So I was really curious and even though it wasn't my business I got nosy and asked the guy a bunch of questions. He was pretty cool. The guy that sat in the window seat in my row was a Chinese guy named Patrick. I tried to pry his life story from him over dinner and I succeeded. I don't have to talk to people, in fact I like the quiet but I do like to talk to people that I think are interested in the same things as me and if you're traveling to Europe, then you probably qualify. Patrick was really nice, and very interesting. He was from Long Island but now lived in San Fran. He has a degree in Biomedical engineering and Business from Penn and he is traveling to Frankfurt to market some medical stuff at a conference. He also lived in Switzerland for nine months so he gave me some places to go to in Italy because he said he visited a lot. He was also fluent in Chinese, while knowing the basics of French and Spanish.
Back to dinner on the flight. I was a little nervous about how dinner would be because I've never taken Lufthasen air (I can't spell it, it's way to German), so I was gonna buy some Chipotle and bring it on the plane with me but I got carried away on my conversation with John-Paul. The food was really good though, I got Chicken and mashed potatoes and I chased it down with a bailey's because I was hoping it had caffeine in it and would keep me up. I still don't know if it had caffeine in it.
One of the best things about flying international is the great movie selection they have. I watched Red 2, Home Alone and then Runner Runner. All together it wasn't too bad of a flight.
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