An American Tale: Sarah Goes East

My second airport adventure was, thankfully, not nearly as stressful as my first. Anne (the woman I was staying with) dropped me off at the International Terminal at about 12:30pm (after I had gotten virtually no sleep the night before), I checked in for my flight, ate my last meal on American Soil (an apple salad from Panera, yum), had some lotion thrown away at security (only issue of the day) and made it to my gate.

The flight itself was for the most part uninteresting. Highlights include watching Star Trek in Italian, a few hilariously inaccurate historical and political conversations with the girl sitting next to me which are better described in conversation, and a couple kids sitting in front of me who decided to be obnoxious Americans and actually get drunk on the plane and block the entire freaking isle because they legally could and because wine was complementary with the meals.

By far though, the best part was this:

What followed after that was a rush of exhaustion (after having about two nights with no sleep and then arriving in Rome at about 8am with a full day ahead of me) and insane heat. I lugged my bags around for a couple hours for move-in, ran up and down stairs a kajillion times (there’s no elevators), had to for some reason take a picture for an ID that day, signed papers, tried to move in, passed out for an hour in the afternoon, took a long cold shower, and finally explored the neighborhood a bit in the evening.

(To the right is actually a view from outside my bedroom window. That huge round thing is Rinaldo’s café in the basement of the school, owned by this adorable Italian couple and a place in which I know I’ll be spending lots of time.)

Despite all of that though: the heat, the sleep deprivation, the heavy lifting… my first sight of Rome was, well, simply incredible. I don’t know if I can describe it fully – all I know was that as soon as I was on that bus away from the airport I couldn’t stop grinning. It could be because something I’ve been dreaming about since I was 12 is finally happening, or maybe because I was finally under some air-conditioning. But I think more than anything it was getting the undeniable feeling that this is exactly where I’m meant to be right now, and I can’t imagine it any other way.