For the first few weeks of this trip I was curious about how culture shock would hit me or if it would even hit me at all. Let me tell you, this weekend culture shock hit and it hit like a train.
Let's start from the beginning:
The first few weeks here were nothing but euphoric. The food was all so fresh, there were gorgeous views around every corner, they took naps EVERY afternoon, there were things to do every weekend and travel was so cheap, the list could go on forever. Although the food is still good, the views are still amazing, they still take naps, and travel is still cheap, this euphoria ended for me this weekend.
We had planned a trip to Barcelona, how exciting. Everything was going great, we had our taxi scheduled to pick us up from the hotel in Rome at 3 a.m., we had arranged our hostel stay in Barcelona, and were ready to live out our inner Cheetah Girl. This excitement ended when I logged on to check into our flights at about 10 p.m. the night before we were supposed to leave and realized I booked our flights for the wrong month. Devastated, I looked for a way to fix this mistake so that I would not ruin everyones weekend but came up with nothing.
Since our Barcelona trip was now ruined, we alternatively made last minute plans to go to Naples with another group and were hit by yet another train (actually, make that missed a train). We woke up late and tried to run to the train station but were not successful. We missed the train to Naples and decided that going home to Castiglion was our best option.
Last night my roommates and I decided to have a relaxing night in Castiglion after our weekend had been ruined. We got pizza from one of our favorite pizza places, curled up in our beds, and watched movies until we fell asleep. It turns out that this was exactly the kind of social support I needed to navigate the shock I was feeling! I woke up this morning ready to spend the day in Florence and relax again tonight.