So the time had come. As the taxi driver, my mom and I had called drove us to my orientation site at the Hilton at the JFK airport we got out and we said our goodbyes. I checked in and learned that I fly out at 1:15 or I leave for the airport at that time for Zurich Switzerland, and then have a layover then fly to Roma. When I got to the orientation site I put my luggage in a room where everyone else's luggage was (all it seems like 180 of us). There are students here going to africa, holland, france, italy and I think thats it. When I first got there everyone was in a huge room and I walked in not knowing where to sit standing there awkwardly, thankfully the afs italy group of teenagers called my name cause they recognized me from the Facebook group. So after that the afs volunteers  made everyone leave the room so they could re organize the tables and me the room into a bigger room... Move the big wall separating the two rooms. After we got back into the room most of the italy group found a table right up front. The tables are a medium sized and round and in that big room there were about 15 tables where everyone going on a afs adventure picked a seat. After we all sat down they told us who our group leaders were and then everyone watched a really dated movie about some girl who went to France, I mean this movie was older than I was! After that we all moved out luggage to our rooms and I thankfully got a room key. After that we separated into out separate groups. Our name tag had a sickly note that said a number so that's how we knew. After that we did some normal routine excersising explaining like who we thought we were....and what characteristics inhabit an ambassador... Routine stuff like that. Then we had dinner, and separated into  our groups again. My group leader is AWESOME!! She went to the south of italy 11 years ago. She told everyone going to Italy about her experience and answered questions we all had. Some things I learned from what she said is..... Lunch where she went is the biggest meal of the day (7courses), in school you have one classroom and you don't move from one classroom to the next the teacher moves to you, sometimes there are strikes in school and all the student  in your classroom call each other up and decide not to go to school and Its normal to do that there, the north and south of italy have a rivalry, they sometimes put french fries and hotdogs on pizza, DON'T WEAR SHORTS apparently no one wears shorts only skirts dresses and jeans, tampons are hard to find, every home bathroom has a badea or whatever you call that butt cleaner, always carry tissues with you because the local bathrooms don't have paper anywhere, they don't shower every day, the boys wear really tight pants and so do the girls, and there is no homework only oral tests 4 times a year that you take on Saturday. My roommate is a really cool girl also going to Milan, italy! 

Until next time.....