First day in Italy

My first blog post!!!

There is no way I'm here!

“Wow I cant believe I'm in Italy”, is what I thought when I first landed in Rome. The air was different. It was fresh and clear. I realized that this is going to be the air I breathe for 10 months. I know it's weird that the first thing I thought of was the air quality, but I assure you it's very different here. My other two American friends and I grabbed our giant luggages and just stood in disbelief while everyone else was minding their business. When we exited the airport, the AFS volunteers greeted us with a huge smile on their faces saying “Ciao!”. Not that I didn't also have a smile on my face but I was still shocked that this is my new home. As you know I am a very outgoing person, so when I saw all these other AFS students in a crowd I put on my big girl pants and introduced myself. Of course I was a bit nervous so I greeted them in English. I don't think I realized that there were going to be other students from different parts of the world doing an exchange in Italy. But within an hour I met kids from France and Spain. This was just at the airport!!! Ok let me move this along, we were taken to a hotel right outside of Rome. It basically looked like a dorm for college students, so I felt very grown up. A thing I love about Intercultura (AFS Italy) is how they let all the students come to Rome when first arriving before going straight to their host family. I met kids from Norway, Poland, Thailand, Argentina, Mexico, and other amazing places. This helped me a lot because I noticed we were all going through the same thing. Leaving our families for 10 months to take on an adventure. There were 300 of us at the hotel. All from different parts of the world, all having a different background, but all having the same curiosity to learn about the Italian culture. This is all I could ask for, this showed me that I am here for a reason and it has only begun.