Neve in Castiglion!

Well I made it to Italy safe and sound, and to my great delight I woke up this morning (at 6am... oh well.) and found it had SNOWED (Nevica) all night! Crazy! I spent the early part of the morning walking around town and talking to people I passed on the street. Mostly the conversations consisted of me saying "Buon Giorno!" to which they would reply "Ciao." Some of them would begin saying something that sounded like, "blah blah blah blah blah nevica!" to which I would respond "Si! Fa freddo!" which means "yes, it's cold."

Now... to recap the trip over.

First of all we flew over Manhattan at night, which was amazing. We also flew over London at night, and it was so much smaller... it was really surprising. The sun began to rise as we descended through the cloud layers into Paris.

The view of the sun rising between two cloud layers as we neared Paris.

My first view of a foreign country, Paris appears as we emerge from the clouds.

The Paris airport was pretty decent, and it was the first time I'd ever set foot on foreign soil! Unfortunately we had to take a BUS from the airplane to the air terminal... wierd.

Thanks!

The terminal where we waited for our flight and listed to silly French people.

The flight from Paris to Rome was delayed about an hour, but the flight took us over the Alps, which was possibly one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

The Alps! One of the most amazing sights I've ever seen.

The airport in rome was not that nice, honestly, but when we were at the baggage claim a lady tried to speak to me in Italian about her baggage, and although I wasn't able to answer her question I did catch that she was from Argentina and was wondering if I was also from South America and could I speak Spanish.

It turns out I speak Spanish better than Italian as I was able to have a brief conversation with her about being from Texas and learning Spanish there because so many people speak it. She told me my Spanish was much better than my Italian, but hopefully I'll be able to change that by May.

From there we drove to Castiglion, which took about three hours, and gave me a chance to talk to the bus driver in Italian, which was pretty cool too. I was kind of disapointed with how much its the same as the US. Rome wasn't that awesome, but the old part of Castiglion is awesome, and the people are really nice. The radio stations only play American music, so you'll hear U2 playing Vertigo, then somebody talking about traffic jams in Italian, then Green Day and Boulevard of Broken Dreams. They're big on Avril Lavigne too.

One of the many hilltowns we passed on the way to Castiglion.

Our room in the Santa Chiara center, and Marcus dropping off his stuff.

My first view of town and it was snowing!!!!

The central courtyard of our building.

I'll add pictures to this post as soon as I get a chance to log into a computer that can do photoshop, they provide "email only" computers at the center but apparently there are computers which can do the other stuff around town for a small fee.

EDIT: I finally got to add pictures!!!

Well, I hope everyone is doing well back in the US, I'll talk to you all later!
-Ciao