Shit! Did I Look At That Ticket???

It's hard to believe that over two months have passed since I finished up my summer intensive classes and headed out on vacation. In classic Amanda style, I naturally went out the night before with ever-so-determined plans to go home by midnight, so of course I got home around 3 a.m. No big deal, since my flight wasn't until 1:45 and I had already packed, the only side effect of a night out celebrating a hasher's birthday was that I didn't have the chance to mop the floors before I left. I took off, put the spare key in its hideaway (people had plans for my washing machine, book collection, and bed while I was gone), and taxied my way to a bus stop right across from work - saving myself a great deal of driving around Yongsan-gu on the airport bus.



It's funny how calm it can be, how odd, to leave on a big trip by yourself. I headed off with a tidy stack of books (you never know what you might want to read on a plane), a Suduko book, and my old, incredibly crappy iPod which I had taken along hoping it might work - indeed, it did not. I ended up watching movie after movie. I'm really not a fan of flying - such a freaking boring activity and I'm pretty sure my tree-planting days no longer offset my travelling days. I was just starting to get ants in my pants when the captain announced that the plane was about to land in Milan. Slightly concerning to me, as I expected to be landing in Rome. It was at that moment that it occurred to me that I am exactly the kind of person who might accidentally end up in a different Italian city than I expected. Geography has, historically, not been my strongest subject.



It turns out the plane was merely making more than one stop and I landed in Rome an hour or so later. There is nothing quite as funny as landing in an Italian airport - customs is a cakewalk, but getting your bags takes forever. When I set off the metal detector, there were no hand-held wand ones, I just got felt up (it's my underwire in that particular bra that is the problem and I manage to forget every time because it's also the most comfortable and supportive.)

I only had an evening, a day, and a morning in Rome, but I did have a good friend to meet up with. Through utter serendipity, my friend Jen, who had been living in southern Italy, was leaving for Canada on the same day I was flying to Ghana out of Rome, and so we got to spend some time together in Rome. A quick train ride to Termini, a stop by the supermarket for good cheese, wine, cantaloupe and a vibrating cock ring.



Is that last bit going to need a bit more explanation? Well, I was jet lagged, saw a Durex box that definitely said that it vibrated, and I was curious. Plus there was the matter of needing several gifts for the GMs when I returned to the hash. When Jen and I googled the last bits of Italian that she wasn't familiar with (apparently cock rings don't come up in normal learner's Italian), it struck me that it would indeed be an awesome hash gift. We chatted, drank, caught up. It was incredible to see her again.

And that was the first day of my vacation.