ME AND MY BOO IN MY BOO BOO RIDIN'

On the 5th day left abroading, Europe gave to me... (okay it's a day late but I was studying for finals)

#17- GELATO
#16- ABROAD SONGS
#15- PERSISTENT HAWKERS
#14- ITALIAN WEATHER
#13- ABROAD CONSTANTS
#12- #STUDYABROADPROBLEMS
#11- OLD STOVE PORCELLINO
#10- 3,991 MILES
#9- PARIS, FRANCE

#8- APPRECIATION OF WHAT'S TO COME

#7- MEETING UP WITH ABROAD FRIENDS

#6- BEING COMPLETELY SINGLE

#5- BAD TRAVEL KARMA

I have without a doubt learned from abroad that I never want to do the Amazing Race. I can successfully cross that off my list of reality shows I wish to be on. I've learned how much I hate the process of traveling. I love seeing new places, but with my luck it never seems to go according to plan.. ever.

The worst travel snafu was DEFINITELY getting stranded in Pisa. I have major angst towards Pisa. Pisa shit (say it slowly). You'd think people who studied abroad in Italia would have told us that there is casual transportation strikes often? Nope, so we learned the hard way coming back from Paris. After a Paris metro to a bus back to the airport to a flight back to pisa to take the train from the Pisa airport to the stop at Pisa Centrale to switch trains to get back to Firenze SMN... oh wait on a Sunday night at 9:00 all of the train workers strike in Italy? Ohhh no not all of them just 10% of the train workers decided to stop working that night and we happened to be on one. Your train has been delayed for 30 minutes.... for 1 hours.... your train has been delayed 16 hours.. um what says the obnoxious sounding lady on the loud speaker? You say 16 hours... screw this I'm getting McDonalds.


We then had the pleasure of dealing with rude Italians that were less than helpful and met up with 3 girls from BU having the same problem trying to get to Florence, but even together it was futile. We frantically call our advisor Chiara who gets back to us and tells us to get on a city bus back to the airport to then take a bus back to Florence. So we flail around the Pisa train station trying to figure out which bus to take, finally find it and then prepare ourselves to BOOK it as if we were on the Amazing Race to catch a bus back. In retrospect this was pointless cause the ryanair buses go 24 hours a day, but it was a ROUGH day of traveling and a few of the girls could not handle it all. Ironically enough right before I left for Paris my business psych class I had a lesson learning about how to act in situations and how you can only control how your react, can't control what you're dealt with. This mindset was perfect for me who is someone that worries about EVERYTHING, but I think aside from some culture shock anger that still permeated on me I handled it the best way I could, level headed. We'd eventually get home so crying or bitching about the situation was pointless. There was nothing we did wrong, traveling just sucks.


Add this to my ridiculous plane travels with AirFrance to Cannes and pretty much ever using a Florence transportation system, traveling is not my friend. I'm not going to try to be friends with traveling, but it made me a stronger person able to adapt quickly to situations that are out of my control.