Well, I just got to our hotel where the TCU students are staying before we move into our apartments tomorrow. My body is revolting; it’s as if I’m telling myself that I’m worthless and can’t do anything. Then again, I guess I can’t. I carried my 40lb appalachian trail bag and my Burton snowboarding bag and my laptop case through the Florence airport about three times. Why would I be going through the Florence airport three times? To go through customs; or at least because I think I need to go through customs.
The European customs boggle my mind. Whenever I’ve returned to America from abroad I’ve had to check in through customs at the first place I enter. I didn’t understand the “schengen” system before I just learned the hard (or I guess long) way. It turns out that once you check in to any of the countries participating in the schengen visa system, you don’t have to recheck through customs at any of the other countries. So we hit the problem in Germany where they had us go through with every different gate we entered. We had the opposite problem in Milan where we were confused since we made it to the gate without ever being asked to go through it. When we checked there they said to do it at our final destination. When we found the customs area at Florence, they said we didn’t have to since we’d already checked in. Why is it that America is so paranoid about our borders yet the Europeans are so lax? Cultural shock never stops happening I guess. We’re going out to dinner with an Accent Center person and Dr. Antrim (Dean Volcansek’s husband) who is meeting us here.
