After a long 12 1/2 hour flight from Auckland we finally made it to LA, we all then went to transfer our bags from the air New Zealand area to the Swiss air one, all was going fine then I was told that Invercargill had mucked up my bag and hadn't checked it through properly, so while all the other students continued through customs I was stuck alone for 3 hours while it was "being sorted" but they weren't going to sort it until 3 hours before my flights so I was sitting there thinking I would be alone in LA for 6 hours alone, not long after a very friendly lady from Swiss Air came and asked me if everything was okay, I told her the problem and she kindly took me away and sorted it for me so 4 hours later I went through customs alone to meet up with all the other, we then had another 5 hours to fill in before we boarded but that went very quickly, I Skyped lots of people and got to talk to nearly everyone back home. We then boarded Swiss Air for another 12 hour flight to Switzerland. I had no sleep on the flight to LA and as soon as the plane took off to Switzerland we were all fast asleep for a good 4 hours, we arrived in Switzerland and we're all very surprised when we seen the ground was completely white and the temperature at side was -1 degrees! We carried on through customs again and then had 50 minutes till we had to board the next plane. It was then that we all noticed that NO ONE around us was speaking English and started to realise it may be a bit different for the first few months. 7 of the 20 left boarded the plane to Milan and we taxied out we stopped for a while and had no idea what was happening then two massive water trucks with cranes on the top drove over to the wings and started spraying all the ice off then spraying antifreeze on them. It was nothing like we see at home that's for sure! The flight was only a short 30minutes one so no where near as long as the others! We got off the plane in Milan and we went and got out bags then we went through a place sort of like customs and meet my host family! They were very friendly and made me feel welcome straight away! We then drove 2 1/2 hours back to the house where I meet my host brother because he didn't come cause his girlfriend was around