Finally Here!

We made it to Rome! It's been quite the trip, though! We left Bismarck on Monday, and flew to Chicago. We began our flight to Frankfurt, Germany from Chicago, but about an hour and a half into the flight, the pilot announced that we would be making an emergency landing in Toronto. We never really knew why (all that they told us was that some radio signals were not working). But we heard that somehow it was on CNN...so we got the full story today. It's quite amusing actually, and it involves coffee! You should check it out: (It's on the list of their top stories!) http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/01/05/canada.flight.diverted/index.html?hpt=T2

Amusing, but it did delay our arrival in Rome a day and a half. But we made due. :) We ended up flying back to Chicago and getting a Hilton hotel voucher for the night. The rooms were really nice and it was good to get a few hours of good sleep. We got to sleep around 5:30 am and slept soundly! The next day we caught another flight to Frankfurt at about 4:00pm. This time we arrived safely in Germany. :) However, it was another headache to find our flight to Rome! The German language barrier was dificult to get around, and we found out that we were not booked in the next flight to Rome like we were supposed to be. We ended up wandering around the airport asking for help and talking to different people for a few hours before things were figured out. But we finally got on a flight out and left Germany at about 4:45pm (that's German time....so 9:45am in ND). It was kind of fun to spend the day in Germany after things were figured out, anyway, and hopefully we didn't look so lost anymore!
When I stepped off the plane, I could just smell and feel that I was in Rome. It felt just like it did the first time I was here! The air is much more damp here than back home. The campus is beautiful and very nice. Everything was ready for us and the sisters were waiting. They are so joyful! We had a great dinner and a quick gelato run before we came back to campus to unpack and settle in for the night.
I'll have to fill you in more on the campus later...it's almost midnight here and I'm exhausted! But in a good way, of course! I hope everything is going well in America, and I'll talk to you all soon!