Tuesday May 10th: After a really long 9 ½ hour flight we finally arrive in Italy and so far the trip has gone so smooth, getting off the plane and stepping down into Italy seemed almost unreal like I was going to wake up any moment from the dream. After navigating through the airport with a few lost turns we finally made it to the baggage claim, after walking around for a while not knowing exactly which baggage claim our luggage would be coming to I finally saw my bag out of the corner of my eye which was a relief for all 16 of us girls that were traveling together. Imagine 17 college girls in an airport that is unfamiliar territory--looking for our bulging suitcases that house all of our stuff for the next three months. Hooray for that because we were all a little lost until then. Once we all got our luggage, I was shocked to see how much (or little-- depending on how you look at it) stuff I brought until I started to see the number of bags that others had. The funny part was that once we had our luggage and were outside we had to haul all of our stuff to the end of the airport spot so we could be picked up by our drivers... that was a little intense, 80 pounds of luggage being pulled down a cobble stone sidewalk by me who weights a little more than that.. Basically packing my own weight in clothes and accessories wasn't as smart as I had originally thought. But even though it was a tough walk with luggage, purses, and backpacks it was still an eye-opener at the start of this new adventure. After we got our luggage we met our drivers and were off to the Chigi Palace in Ariccia, Italy. Once we got to the palace we were able to find our rooms/roommates and were able to start the unpacking process—that took a while being girls we had to place everything in the right spots in our little "nests". Once we got to where we were all situated within our rooms, we had our first walk to Albano. We then ate dinner at the restraint called BBQ- which really was a pizzeria.