Better than our dreams

We are here. We did it. All by our 20 year old selves, we made it to three countries in one day, over 5,000 miles, over the Atlantic Ocean and finally to our hotel (that looks like it belongs in a romantic comedy) in breath stealing Florence Italy. The last leg of the trip was not nearly as smooth as the first two were. Because our flight from Germany to Italy was more of a shuttle flight, we had to pick up our boarding passes in Germany. After going to the wrong gate, finally getting out passes, annoying a number of air port officials with out lack of German language skills and our separated liquids (we took our contacts out on the plane over to Europe) we finally made it to our gate on the other side of the air field with out boarding passes in hand. We had been warned that gates change quit frequently in Frankfurt so we were listening to see if ours would change too like so many other around us seemed to be. On a whim we decided to get up and walk around and low and behold we discovered out gate had changed with out our knowledge. (It also wasn't showing up on the electronic flight boards) So we two of us felt pretty lucky that we just stumbled on our flight by accident. The flight its self was uneventful with a yummy chicken and mozzarella sandwich and a slightly bumpy landing, but we reached Florence earlier than intended. It was a little confusing finding the bus, but we just made the one that would take us to the train station that is a how skip and a jump away from our hotel/school where we will be working the next couple of weeks. Complements of Professor Mockridge, the women who recommendation the program to us (and provided letters of recommendation) we had directions to the hotel where we checked in and promptly took showers and naps. Despite the fact we both tried to sleep on the plane a bit, we've both been up for over 24 hours at this point in time and we are functioning on at least one solid hour with maybe 2 more of shut eye rest. But even jet lag could not keep us from exploring the city. On complete accident we stumbled across the Arno River (I kid you not. We just chose one street at random and kept following it for a couple of blocks and just got that lucky) We snapped a few pictures before grabbing a grilled sandwich for dinner (which we ate on the balcony of our hotel.) We are living the dream, actually better than the dream since it is beyond anything either of us could have imagined. We are blessed to be safely in this beautiful and historical city (with all of our luggage) for over 3 months. What more could we ask for?