The first Day

So I arrived at the JFK airport in NY on the 8th at like 1030ish their time. It took me about 30 minutes to figure out that after exiting the plane from Minneapolis which terminal I was actually in and then another 30 minutes figuring out how the junk I was supposed to get to the main terminal...three years of college and i cant find my way around an airport!! When I finally got to the main terminal and I found my airline, I sat down to wait for the check-in line to open. After looking like a blubbering mess in the middle of a very public airport, I finally stopped the tears and runny nose. I was beyond scared and incredibly nervous. For a solid 5 minutes i even had a personal conversation with myself, you know the one with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. I was beginning to think this was up there on the "Worst Decisions I have Ever Made List." Part of me is thinking: Are you stupid?! You are leaving every person you know and love to go to some random country where you dont speak their language or have a clue what the next four months will be like" and the other part is thinking; You'll be find...it will be fine...everthing is fine.. I honestly still coudlnt tell you whih thought was meant to be the devil or the angel.
Around 1pm that day I found out that my plane to Rome that was supposed to leave at 5pm had not even left Rome yet. So after having what i thought couldnt get worse of a day suddenly turned into an extra 12 hours of waiting...in an airport...with crappy food and no internet service. I did meet up with 8 other people who were going on the same trip as me so i was nice to get to know them but I couldnt help but think how much i would have rather been laying on my couch watching TV with my dad/mom nagging me in the background to do something productive. (Love you mom and dad!)
We finally boarded the plane at 1 am NY time. Me and another girl cohursed an old italian man to switch seats with me so we could sit together. Of course he didnt speak any english so the entire sence took over 5 minutes and involved a lot of hand motions. When we finally got the picture through to him, I started to get settled in my new seat by looking up to see where I could put my very large backpacking bad in the overhead compartment and of course the one compartent open is used soley for Aircarft emergency equipment and so I rode the entire 7.5 hour plane ride with no foot room and my oversized purse sitting in my lap. It was the Traveling day from hell to say the least. But we made it ar about 330pm Rome time and every bag was accounted for!