Moving Out of the Country (temporarily)

Hey! If you're reading this, you are probably related to me:)! But I am going to pretend that the whole world is interested in my time away from the U.S. just as much as my parents and I are!

I am Johanna, just finished up my 2nd year at Penn State as a Public Relations Major and Digital Media Trends & Analytics Minor. And as of more recently I am a part of the ISI Florence program through my college for a study abroad trip.

I left Wednesday to fly to Florence for 6 weeks, and I thought a great way to capture my time abroad would be to document with photos and little stories about what I see and what activities I am involved in!

I am writing this while I am super jetlagged at 4pm on Friday after walking 5 miles already today.

The flight was okay for the most part, but I only got 3 hours of sleep and they didn't get my suitcase on the layover so I am currently living off of 2 outfits that I have already worn. The international flight was really big, and they served us dinner and breakfast. I also watched the movie, House of Gucci, on that ride since it was 8 hours and I thought it was a fun way to get excited to be in Italy.

Once I got off the first flight I had 15 minutes until my layover from Vienna to Florence, and since the Vienna airport was under a lot of construction it was very confusing to get to the other gate. I had to take a shuttle from the first gate to the second gate, and then once I scanned my boarding pass I had to take another shuttle to the tarmac where they were boarding people on the plane from the ground.

I was the very last person to board along with a couple other people from my last flight which makes sense why the group of our's suitcases were all stick stuck in Vienna once we landed in Florence.

Once in Florence, I met with my ISI Florence faculty and they helped me with a car to my apartment where I met my first 2 roommates. My apartment is about 10 minutes from the Duomo and in a very towny area. It is super pretty and has a ton of natural light. I have 8 roommates (me included) and we each have a double. They are all super nice and come from different colleges except one other girl goes to Penn State also. Luckily, 2 of my roommates have my photo class as well so we are able to walk to class together.

(first picture: The Duomo) (second picture: View from my Apartment)

Thursday after we all arrived, we decided to walk around town. We ended up eating dinner last night at a side street restaurant, and I ordered a glass of Chardonnay and the Tagliani Beef Sauce Pasta. We also had gelato yesterday from, "IL Procopio"! So good!

We didn't do too much later, because we were all extremely jetlagged and we went to bed at 8p.m. I think my eyes instantly closed as soon as i hit the bed.