The Long Journey Home

Saturday night was family night in Via dell' Ariento.  Everyone was packing and cleaning and not wanting to leave.  It is hard to say goodbye to people you have spent the past 4 months with and saw everyday.  It was eerily silent in the building.  I stayed up as late as I could to make sure I said bye to everyone I would not see in the morning.  Around 5 I finally went to sleep and awoke an hour later to get ready to leave.  I said bye to everyone and went to the shuttle with, Jon, Ben, Lexie, Chris, Tyler, Will, and Monica.  Lexie and Chris were headed to Switzerland and the rest of us were on our way to Frankfort.  We arrive at the airport with plenty of time for check-in and to get through the joke that was airport security.

We watched the TV screen as our flight was delayed later and later.  When the airline personnel finally told us the flight was cancelled there was no possible way to catch my connection out of Frankfurt.  We were told to get our luggage from the luggage claim and then to get on a bus that Lufthansa got for us to take to Bologna that was an hour away and there was a plane waiting for us.  We finally got to Frankfurt and were left to get new flights.  Lucky for us, they put us in a nice hotel for the night.  When booking my flight home, my friend Megan was also going to Austin so I booked our flights together.  She went to go get our bags with Jon and I took care of our flights.  When the five of us got to the hotel, we ate dinner and then watched a movie to relax.  It was the first night in a week that I had more than an hour of sleep at one time.

Megan and I had a 10:15 flight Monday morning and it took us 11 hours to get to Dallas.  Im now back in the US and ready to return to Europe as soon as I possibly can.  It was an amazing semester and I learned so much from school and the people I met.  Here are some photos from my last remaining days in Florence.

The End