It's never as easy as it looks

For those of you who are paying close attention, you may be wondering why I'm making a post when I'm supposed to be on a plane to Philadelphia. It turns out that due to weather all over the country and a huge staffing problem with Northwest airlines yesterday, my flight to Philly was cancelled. After spending two crazy hours running around in the airport and making calls to all sorts of 800 numbers, I finally have a confirmed path to Brindisi. For all the hell it was (which I won't go into detail about here), it's turning out to be a better situation. I have a business class seat direct from Seattle to Paris, and then I go from there to Rome and Brindisi. I'll be getting to Brindisi 4 hours later than I was orginially scheduled to, but I'm leaving 8 1/2 hours later from Seattle.....overall my journey will be 4 1/2 hours shorter! I'm also pretty excited about the business class flight to Paris :)

Right now I'm back at the house I've been staying at in Seattle. My mom and hosts are showering and such since we all rushed out of the house this morning at 5:00 to get to the airport in time for my (cancelled) flight.

Anywho, all is well....and I might even get to catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower :-P

Au revoir!

A Little Bit Relieved

Early this morning I got a 4 page email from someone in Rome associated with my program! It answered the vast majority of my questions about my first few hours/days in Italy...plus some! It turns out I'm going to be staying in a Salentina Masseria (a southern agriturismo, for those of you keeping track) with the rest of the people in my program for the first night. Basically that means I'll be fed home-cooked food, see some beautiful countryside, and be able to get a good night's sleep before embarking on the city of Lecce. They also said that I'll most definitely be in an apartment, although I don't know whether or not I'll have a roommate. (Laura, you may still be the only one to hold that position in my life).

Basically, I'm just really glad that they decided to give me some information about what will happen to me when I arrive.

I have to be at the airport at 5:30 tomorrow morning, so this is probably my last post before I land in Italy :)

Ciao!

I Have An Address!!!

This is the address for the Centro Linguistico di Ateneo - Scuola di Italiano per Stranieri: Via Vito Carluccio, 2 73100, Lecce, Italia.

If you put that in this website, you can find the school with relation to downtown Lecce: http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/europe/italy/apulia/lecce/maps.html

That website has a lot of good information in general. The main part (as opposed to the map specifically) is: http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/europe/italy/apulia/lecce/overview.html

In other news, I'm in Seattle right now - I got here this afternoon. I think tomorrow I'm going to spend some time downtown (Pike Place Market, perhaps?) and then I fly out early Thursday. I think we're going to spend the afternoon/evening doing all sorts of last minute research.

Ciao!

Living Situations

Just a short post to say that I'm quite anxious about where I'm going to be living. All they've told me is that I'll be in a dorm, apartment, or home-stay and that they'll pick me up at the airport and take me to my new home. That's not really enough for me to be comforted about flying around the world. I mean, really.....I arrive in 9 days. How hard is it to have living situations figured out a week and a half in advance?!?!

Final Preparations

Wow - I just realized how long it's been since my last post. Nothing really important has happened in the process of getting me to Italy - I've just been finishing up my quarter at NU. I finished my last final on Tuesday, packed up everything, and flew home on Thursday. After several good night's sleep, I think I'm about ready to tackle the huge list of things I have to do/get before I leave: get adapters and converters, make a million copies of anything that's important, do a ton of laundry, go to 4 doctor's appointments, figure out where I'm going to nursing school..... so much to do in 2 1/2 weeks.

I'll be leaving home with my mom on Tuesday the 26th to drive to Seattle (much cheaper airfare from there), possibly do some last minute shopping or else just hang around Seattle on Wednesday, then fly out early Thursday morning. I suppose there won't really be much more for me to report before I leave, but once I'm in Italy, I will post much more often - hopefully almost daily :)