*My last few moments here*

To start with my finals went well. I had two on Wednesday and now they are all over with and I am officially done with my Spanish minor. Hooray!!!!

Wednesday Night the program that we are here with had a goodbye dinner for us. It started at 10pm and was right alongside the river. Absolutely beautiful with yummy food as well. Tapas are very popular here...basically lots of appetizer foods instead of a main course meal. We had tapas at the goodbye dinner.

Our two directors gave us a going away present which was a decorative fan. They are so pretty and I think I am going to hang mine on my wall in the fall because I love it! We didn't end up getting back to our houses until around 2am. Several of us were leaving in the morning to go to Milan, Italy for the weekend and we had to get up around 6am!! I tell you this because the time and lack of sleep sets up my wonderful story...
I am not a morning person, never have been and never will be nor do I function off of 4 hours of sleep. Alison can testify that I like to try and get in 8hours every night :) So...Sarah, Jess, and I head to the airport and arrive there around 7:30am. Our flight wasn't leaving until 9:05am and was boarding at 8:30am. Plenty of time! Well, we were standing in line to get our tickets stamped and Jess and Sarah pull out their passports. It didn't dawn on me for a couple of minutes but then I decided to ask them we didn't need our passports did we? Their faces were priceless, half because they thought I was joking. But oh no I wasn't. Silly me FORGOT my passport. I mean you're leaving the country why would you need your passport? Even the night before I was laying in bed thinking ok I can't forget my license for the morning because I am going to need some sort of identification to show them. I even looked right at my passport and it never occurred to me that I would need it! Oh my word. Thankfully we had enough time that I was able to catch a taxi and go back to my house and grab my passport and make it with plenty of time to spare. Let me tell you when I got back to the airport I sure was awake and the adrenaline was rushing through me. A great start to our trip! Adventure #1. haha

Adventure #2. We arrived to Milan with no problems at all and actually had to take a bus into Milan because we flew into a city right outside of it. When we finally arrived in Milan we were walking around and ran into Liz, Anna, and Danielle (some girls here with us from Cedarville). We had known they were going to Milan but they were planning on going to Switzerland as well and so we figured our schedules were different and what not. They ended up staying at the same hotel as us and Liz ended up coming back early and stayed with Me, Sarah, and Jess and Milan for the rest of the weekend. BUT, on Thursday when we arrived in Milan it took us FOREVER to find our hotel. We finally did and we walked around a bit and got dinner and what not. We were exhuasted so we headed to bed around 11pm. At around 1am I woke up to thunder and lightning and this very loud siren/beeping noise. I was in such a daze that it never dawned on me what it actually was so I ignored it...for what felt like 10minutes. I kept thinking to myself that obnoxious noise needs to stop. Finally I heard Jess get up and open the door...the sound all of a sudden got louder! haha She yells to me and Sarah guys there is a fire alarm going off! We both jump out of bed, I grab everything that I brought with me and we run downstairs. The RA in me knew I need to knock on the other girls room and tell them there was a fire alarm going off but they were smart and were already down stairs. We found out later that there was no fire but apparently lightning hit right next to our building which caused the alarm to go off. We had a great laugh about it afterward because each one of us reacted differently to the alarm. Thankfully there was no fire!!

Adventure #3. The next day Sarah, Jess, and I walked around to see all the sights that we could. We decided to take a break and people watch for a bit. In the middle of that, this CREEPY guy came up to us, shook each one of our hands and started talking to us. At first we thought he was nice but then we were like ok how do we get rid of this dude! He wanted Sarah to dance with him for 10 minutes and he would give her 5 euros. She declined and he asked if she were Mormon haha He then wanted her to kiss his forehead (which he wiped off for her to show her it was clean) 10x for 5 euros. Like what the heck! Finally we said we saw some people down the way who we thought would probably be up for that and he left us alone.

Italy was so much fun. It was a very relaxing weekend and we were able to see some beautiful things. Europe is gorgeous and I LOVE it over here. But I am not gonna lie, knowing home is two days away brings a huge smile across my face. :)
Much love,
~Linnea