Days of travel

I made it to the airport with plenty of time. Plenty. But it was so great to meet everyone and get to know them. I'm kind of obsessed with them. Katie H. and I met up at a Starbucks to go through security together. When we got to the gate, Jonathan (who I instantly connected with...over LOST of course), Leanna, and Emily were the only ones there. They were easy to spot-partly because of facebook stalking. Which we all later admitted to doing. The group trickled in and we had 16 taking the group flight (we counted so we could always make sure we had everyone). We bonded quickly and it wasn't long before we were cracking jokes with each other and picking on David for accidently sending us all an email that was meant for one our professors. We even had a child traveling with us-Sammy's guitar which got deemed 'the child' because when "families with small children" were called to board, they called Sammy's name as well because of his 'odd' luggage. Tess, David, and I became Team 43 and found our seat in row 43 in the back of the plane. None of us got very much sleep, none really. The flight became very interesting when we were landing. Tess turned to me and said she was going to throw up. It was a good thing I had just flipped through a magazine and had found the life saver of a 'barf bag.' David and I didn't know what else to do but laugh, which got Tess laughing (and vom-ing at the same time). So Tess got the title of 'the girl who vom-ed on the plane." Frankfurt's airport was huge. We had to take a bus from our airplane to customs and our gate. Customs intimidated me when they asked random questions like "What was I doing in Europe" and "When I was returning home." The lay-over was long and it didn't help that our plane was late. But the flight from Frankfurt to Verona was like up and then back down compared to the earlier flight. I slept on that one and it felt like I had gotten a full nights sleep. I was even kindly waken up to see the Alps. Which was a sight!
When we got to Italy, we were joking around and trying to guess which one of us was going to get our luggage lost. I had picked Emily because she had flown into Atlanta. But, to my surprise, all the bags made it! Not too difficult when we are the only people in that tiny airport, however. Then we went through customs, or did we? We didn't get our passports stamped or anything and we were out on the sidewalk and thought it couldn't be right that we were just allowed in to a country that easily. Katie S. and I became the problem solvers to try and figure it out. After many trips back and forth between terminals and lots of false information and waving my arms and yelling "ME ESCUSSI. ME ESCUSSI"(I know you're laughing imagining what I must have looked like), we were told by a politzia (a favorite Italian word of mine) that we did not need to get our passports stamped because we had done that in Germany. I hope he was right...we will see.