Arrival

I made it to Rome in one piece, which is a good first start to the trip.  The laptop's all set and ready to go, and I'm posting from it now in my room, after several rearrangements of furniture to get the two plugs in the room and the ethernet cord to actually be in convenient places.

One thing that stands out from the series of flights is how nice it is to fly out of Buffalo.  Arriving just over two hours early, I got checked in, checked bags, got my boarding pass, and was through security in 15 minutes.  Neither Logan airport in Boston nor Heathrow was able to come close by comparison.  Logan proved to be the biggest pain, where a few people decided to show up to the British Airways counter completely ignorant of the restrictions on both checked bags, carry-ons, and liquids and gels.  The end result of this was a half hour of the line not moving as these nuts unpacked and repacked their luggage numerous times to get it all just right and deal with the liquids.  Needless to say, everyone was extremely annoyed as the line backed up on account of people who hadn't bothered to show up prepared.  Heathrow was somewhat better, though they made the odd decision to use a gate that required a 10 minute bus ride to get to the plane.

One bit of advice for travel is to avoid the UK if at all possible in your travel plans, as they are currently restricting carry-ons to one bag not much larger than the size of a decently stuffed laptop bag (roughly 22 x 18 x 10) for all flights going through the country.

The Rome program this semester is operating rather thin, as only 4 people are here this time, instead of the usual 8 who can go if they choose.  It seems like it will be a good group to get along with and the portion of the convent attached to the Basilica we're using is fairly modernized and should be nice and comfy after a while.

More after the process of getting registered to stay here, which is apparently both newly complicated and highly expensive.