5/14: Today we left for Italy! Packing in a carry on was a hassle but to my surprise.. IT WORKS. I was able to fit about two weeks worth of clothes, my toiletries, and shoes in a backpack and a carry on. I was kind of nervous to travel out of the country without knowing anyone except for my professor, but after a long day of traveling, it was good to know that I wasn't the only one and it made me feel way more comfortable about everything.
We flew from Houston to Amsterdam and I have never been on a flight that long. Thankfully, they had movies, tv shows, and music to listen to and they had a good selection. I watched A Star Is Born, Bohemian Rhapsody, and The Hate U Give (I almost cried watching every single one). 9 hours later, we arrived in Amsterdam and at the airport, it hit me that we were the foreigners and I couldn’t understand anything that the locals were saying. I felt kind of weird and it made me think hard about people who move to America and don't know English. I feel bad for them because Americans practically EXPECT for immigrants and visitors to know English but in reality, learning another language is hard and it requires a lot of time, effort, and resources.
When arriving in Milan from Amsterdam, I was excited to be in Italy after the long journey. Just being in Italy relaxed me and put me in my “vacation mode”. The bus ride from Milan to Torino was peaceful (mostly because I napped the entire time). Our hotel was beautiful and I was excited for our first meal to have some content for my blog.
We went to Eataly to have our first dinner and it was a grocery store, cafeteria, gelato shop plus more all into one store. We all sat at long tables and kind of got to a know each other a bit. They brought out white wine and bread with assorted cheeses and prosciutto. I actually liked prosciutto, which is weird for someone who doesn’t enjoy the ham on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our second course consisted of pasta with marinara sauce and a fresh ball of mozzarella. Our pasta course was too raw for my liking and (everyone else’s for that matter) but the fresh mozzarella was DELICIOUS. Our third course was a tiramisu and I am a huge sweet fanatic, so I thought that I would fall in love with it. I don’t believe that I’m a big tiramisu fan at all. Eataly was a cool experience for our first night in Italy and I was just so impressed with how everything in the store was locally grown or sourced. Overall, the beauty of everything and just knowing that I was actually in Italy made me so grateful that I didn’t even care much about the uncooked pasta. Besides, there will DEFINITELY be more food on this trip.