So Far, So...hmm...interesting

Despite the title of this blog, my first day has been great, and yes, interesting, for several reasons. First of all, it takes a while to adjust and get oriented to a new time zone that's 7 hours ahead of Alabama time. And trying to get a good night sleep from 4:00 in the afternoon till 2:00 in the morning on a jet is pretty much impossible, even after taking a Dramamine. I've never flown overseas before so my body is still a little confused. Once I took a nap and showered, I felt a little better. Better until I blew up my new straightening iron. I knew bringing my CHI would be risky so my mom was nice enough to buy my a chepaer, but decent one at Target. Well, I didn't realize that there are two kinds of converters. The whole converter/adpater thing confused me anyway, so I knew I'd mess up some kind of appliance over the next three months. But the first day? Seriously. I was so mad at myself. Here, there's no running to a nearby Wal-Mart or Target, so I'm now stuck with curly hair till I don't know when. Later, my roomate, Courtney, and I decided to be adventurous and explore this small town of Ariccia and its neighbor, Albano. We stopped at the first gelateria we saw and bought some. Problem: I didn't know how to order in Italian. I saw some blue gelato called "Puffo" and inquired about it, pointing to the blue "puffo" and holding my hands out and shrugging like I'm clueless. The lady says, "Smuff" (meaning Smurf). I thought I'd be even more daring by trying some Smurf gelato. It was pretty good, actually. Then we headed off to find the train station. The language barrier made for some more interesting encounters. I'm working on my Italian but don't know as much as I thought I did. I know "dove" (pronounced do-vay, if you're interested) means "where" but don't know the word for "train." So I stopped some high school boys and said, "Dove Train?" They understood me, which was good, because I just asked "where is train" instead of "where is the train station located." They spoke very fast Italian which I did not understand and pointed us in a direction. Needless to say, we never found it. The last adventure of the night occurred just a few hours ago. As we were walking back from dinner, a car full of Italian guys started whistling at us. All the other girls ignored it since this kind of thing happens a lot (Italian men are brave), but if you know me, I'm gonna mess right back. I gave the guys a little finger-wave and then an "I-yi-yi," and the driver put on his hazard lights and stopped traffic in the middle of the road to watch nine American girls walk by. Cars were honking at these guys and eventually passed them. All of us were laughing in disbelief that a car would actually do something as crazy as that. But then again, you can never underestimated the aggressiveness of Italian men. I'll be back...