When In Rome... Don't Get Lost

Fall Break was approaching which also meant that my birthday and trip to Italy were right around the corner as well. I was very excited to be spending my 20^th birthday in another country and away from my family for the first time. The weekend had finally come and after being delayed two hours in Heathrow we had touched down in Rome. It still being early morning, I thought I was hallucinating when I saw my parents greeting me at the gate in Italy. They had detoured from where they planned on being for their anniversary and met me in Rome to wish me a happy birthday. It was overwhelming to see them because it was completely unexpected. After I got a hug and a kiss in we were already off to our sightseeing tour bus.

We were officially on our own in a foreign speaking country. It was extremely exciting but at the same time it was kind of scary. Although there were seven of us on the trip, there still was not really comfort in numbers. None of us had phones that worked in Italy and none of us knew Italian other than the most basic words. If we had gotten separated for any reason I don’t really know how we would have found the other person. Only one of the people in our group had an itinerary with directions to each place. Along with being unprepared for diving into a new culture, only a select few had keys to our hostels; there were not enough keys for all of us.

On one point during our trip we were all visiting the Vatican but got split up because not everybody wanted to pay to get into the Sisteen Chapel. Another group member and I went back to the Colosseum to explore the Palantino and half way through the ruins we had realized we had no idea how we were going to meet back up with our group. Thankfully we had recollected that we made dinner reservations at seven so we were appreciative for the fact that we would surly find our group again. We did end up meeting back up with our group and had a phenomenal family dinner.

Going to Italy taught me that you should never blindly travel to another country with limited knowledge. Always have a sense of direction as to where you are and definitely bring a translation dictionary with you. It would be wise to have a dictionary because I got yelled at on a bus for using an invalid bus ticket and I had no clue as to what the guy was saying. I had made the poor assumption that he would know a little bit of English to explain, however it is not always the case. The trip definitely broadened my perspective on different cultures and it was surely a great experience that has furthered my traveling experiences.