Ciao Italia - November 18, 2011

The past sixteen days had flown by, and it was finally time to say ciao to Italy. Although it had been an outstanding trip, we were all anxious and excited to go home to our families. We started the day with an early wake-up call in attempt to make it to the airport on time for our flight. We were out the door and in the vans by six am as we said bye to Buja. After about a two hour car ride we finally reached the airport in Venice and said our "goodbyes" and "thank yous" to Dr. Stewart and Mr. Stewart.With only a little over an hour left till our flight began boarding, we rushed to get our boarding passes and check in our luggage. We ran into a couple complications with some boarding passes but we made it just in time for our flight. The view was spectacular as we took off over the mountains and said ciao to Italy.

We landed in Paris on time, leaving us with about a two hour layover. After going through a customs check we began the long walk to our gate, which happened to be on the other side of the airport. In the process we lost Emily for a short five minutes, but she found her way back to the group with little delay. By the time we reached our gate we had just enough to time to buy ourselves some lunch and stop at the restrooms. Finally we boarded the plane and began the long flight that would bring us home. Throughout the course of the eight hour flight, many of us watched movies, listened to music, snacked, and slept in hopes of making the flight go by faster.

After what seemed like forever we finally landed in Detroit. Although the line for customs seemed endless it actually moved pretty quickly, and we had no trouble claiming our luggage either. The fact that we had been on a farm in Italy as well as handled live stock didn't play in our favor. We were sent to another line where we had to have the shoes that we wore on the farm sprayed. While waiting for our shoes to be returned we went through another baggage examination. As soon as our shoes were returned we were allowed to leave and meet our families who were all waiting outside. Italy had been the trip of a lifetime, but everyone seemed happy to be home, knowing that they would be sleeping in their own beds.