No, grazie!

Let’s be real here. No one wants to hear about my flight because we all know what went down. The classic tearful goodbye(all on my mom’s side of course), and excitement of boarding, the takeoff, the inability to sleep, the connection and baggage trouble and finally, the long-awaited arrival. No one really cares. All you want to know is if I had any crazy encounters along the way to report to you, and I’m sorry to say that nothing stood out.

Wait, I lied. There was the one British guy who was sitting across the aisle from me on Virgin. Now I’m a great sleeper, but this guy took the cake: he slept through almost 3/4 of the entire flight. Unable to sleep myself, despite having both an aisle and window seat to myself, I took to observing how he did it. Not in a creepy way, because if I was being creepy, I would’ve taken a picture of it, which I did half consider, which I guess means I am a bit creepy. Ok fine, whatever. Point is, as I lay in the darkness of coach seating watching Glee, this guy turned in his seat, faced my general direction, still asleep, and opened his mouth into the longest O I’ve ever seen. I honestly thought he was gonna suck my soul out, a thought that made me break out into peals of laughter, but unfortunately everyone else was too busy sleeping and couldn’t join in my mirth. Their loss.

So other than the Dementor Brit, everything went smoothly until I landed in Rome. No, no, I wasn’t accosted by a member of the Italian Mafia as my father feared (though I did see someone get questioned by two agents in badges immediately after they got into the pick-up terminal, shady stuff right there). In fact I had a series of epiphanies:

1) I’m in Italy!

2) Crap! I don’t speak Italian.

Yes my friends, the language consideration did not strike me as particularly troublesome until the moment I left the shelter of customs and flight attendants and stepped into the “real world”.And that unfortunately remains a problem, so I’ve adopted one of my fellow student’s philosophy on communication: Just point and smile. Or in my case, because I don’t fancy looking even stupider than I already appear, I point, gesture, speak in Spanish, and do cartwheels until the waiter/barista/store owner begs me to stop. Straightening up, I leave the store immensely satisfied with myself, convinced I could do this forever since I’m so good at it.

In my defense, I did learn how to emphatically say no to the vendors at the Colosseum and have put Italian users of the phrase “No, grazie” to shame with how much I’ve utilized and perfected it…

No really, I promise I’ll start learning. Like tonight, when the other kids hit up an Irish pub that I have absolutely no interest in seeing. I’ll be studying I promise!

And these pictures should suffice to demonstrate what I did today after getting my Italian phone number: