I headed out on Saturday night. Plane to Zurich Switzerland leaving at 9pm. Our plane however was around an hour late leaving due to a passenger not coming on the plane and the crew needing to hunt it down in the cargo bay of the plane. The rest of the flight was uneventful, but long. A seven hour flight across the pond. Sleep didn't come easy, so I took a few short naps in between watching "Battle:Los Angeles", "SuckerPunch" and "True Grit". They served us plenty of drinks, as well as either a chicken or pasta dinner. I choose the chicken, it was not really all that great, but food was food. I scarfed it down which watching US Marines shoot down alien invaders.
The fellow who sat next to me was heading to Paris, where he was from. He spoke good English and I gave him my (strong) opinions on the movie selections available to us. He drank Ginger Ale the whole trip, while I preferred the Orange Juice and a cup of tea. He watched "The Departed" and also was not the biggest fan of the chicken. He had to rush off the plane when we landed in Zurich, as we landed late. I had no such rush. The plane arrived in Zurich sometime around 11am. My next flight was not until 5:45. I spent my time playing video games on my computer, eating Almonds, wandering around and wrapping my Nalgene in knotted hemp (I lost my Nalgene afterwards though..sadly..). I was excited to get on our one hour flight from Zurich to Switzerland on Swiss Airlines (They gave us chocolate!). However, due to a thunderstorm in Florence, we had to land in Pisa instead. The flight attendants told us that there would be buses for us to take to Florence available for us. I met up with an Australian Girl names Natalie at the check-out line (mostly because we both spoke English). We grabbed our luggage and went outside to get our bus. We waited around a quarter of an hour for our for our buses, until I went inside and was told that the buses should arrive in about 20 min. 20 mins fly by, and a fellow from California I met on the plane came over to us and said that there was a private bus heading to Florence train station for 9 euros. We figured that the swiss buses were not going to arrive for a while, so the three of us all got onto the bus and were thankfully, finally on our way to Florence.
I grabbed a cab at the train station, said goodbye to my Australian friend and told the cab driver where I needed to go. My worry was that my roommates would be asleep and I'd have trouble getting in. The second the cab stopped at the gate leading to our house, three english speaking fellows jumped out helping me with my luggage and welcoming me to our new home. When I got inside, around seven other students from the program were also inside, apparently they had been sort of waiting for me to eventually show up. It was a great welcome and all the folks I've met so far from OCAD are fantastic.
I found myself hitting the sheets quite late last night, but woke up around 8:30am the next day (today). Basically, Eddison and I went down to the downtown of Florence (where the Duomo is). He needed to get a bike and I really had no idea where anything was. We got some cheap and good pizza north of the downtown, stopped by where the studio was, picked up a bike and headed back to the apartment around 2pm. We ran into Adam and Chi (also my housemates) east of the Duomo. They were on the hunt for unlocked WiFi signals, which are not easy things to find. We don't yet have internet in our house, so we have to try and get it where ever we can.
I spent the later part of the afternoon exploring (briefly) the southern shore of the Arno. I found the local Games Workshop store as well. I passed by a lot of Tourist traps, but stopped in none as the day was getting late. I didn't arrive back home until nearly seven. I got a pot of water boiling for tea and the Hip pumping when the buzzer on the gate rang and it was a few of the girls who live a few blocks away from our program. They invited us to hand out at their place (and use their internets). We arrived sometime after 8pm (we got some groceries first) and had a great dinner over there. There is apparently 23 of us in the Program, but I've only really met nine or eleven other people. Tomorrow is our first class, 3:30pm.
Anyway, it's quite late now, so I'm going to head off to bed.
Ciao!
~Jared.
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