Ciao!

Well, I made it!!! Yesterday was the long day(s) of my life. that day went on and on. I think i went from 8am Thurs to midnight friday-maybe 15 minutes of sleep..maybe, plus add in time change-Illinois is 7 hours behind here. I left St Louis at 12:30pm and made it to Chicago around 1:45, well actually my flight left at 12:50pm... we had to wait to take off. So then in Chicago i had to find the international terminal. which i found fairly easily. Then I walked in and found Sarah. she was in line for Air France! it was really a good thing i found her, i probably wouldve forgotten to check-in. and the line for Air France went on and on. So it wouldve been a long time to wait w/o her. So we made it to our gate and ran into people that are on the trip so i met quite a few people before even getting on the plane, which is great. they are all nice people. Fun to hang out with. I sat next to a girl that is on the trip on the flight from Chicago to Paris. Our group was all over the plane i think. Sarah had to sit next to a lady that had a dog, but i think she gave the dog a tranquilizer... or a few. Our flight from Paris to Verona was delayed an hour. we werent very happy about that. we were so tired. i cant remember what time it was... i think we got into paris at 1:30 am, yeah and then our next flight was a few hours later and then it got delayed an hour. I didnt sleep on the flight to Paris. But we had sweet tvs on the seat in front of us so we could watch movies'there were about 3-4 choices, or play games, watch mcgyver. it was great. i didnt get a chance to read because i played games and watche Roman Holiday-felt it was appropriate. Made it to verona, found Claudio-our guide for the summer and eventually got to our apartment. we are spread throughout verona. our apartment, i live with sarah and a girl named Laura, is in an great location. its a minute walk to Piazza Bra' which is i dont know how to describe it. its a open area with shops, the arena is there, cafes. its great. they had music last night theres still some stuff going on now. Verona is great. I love it! we walked around today and saw Juliets balcony. Juliet is spelled different here but i dont remember how to spell it. I plan to go back and look around more. it was really crowded today. i definatly felt like a tourist today. the mass of 40 of us walking around with Claudio as our guide. after a few hours of that a few of us decided to go back and find an internet cafe. so we got a little lost. not really lost-we knew where we were and how to get to where we needed to go...but we were still a little confused. Its great, you walk down the middle of the street which are kinda like cobblestones. get out of the way for cars and scooters. I think we are in a touristy part of town, but its not all American tourists so thats fun. Our apartment-its a nice place...well the building is. its 5 floors, of course we are on top. we have a balcony that kinda connects but shares a fence with another group from our trip. theres 4 groups of us in that apartment, so thats really fun. Its older looking. two security gates. our door to get into our room is really heavy, we have a skeleton key to get into our apartment. a gate to get to the apartments and a big wooden door to get into the building. Tonight we are having a group dinner. so i better get going, even though its at 21:00 (9pm) im gonna try to do some shopping quick...maybe.