1st Day

What a day, probably the longest I've ever had.  I am finally here in Viterbo.  No pics yet, we got in and it was already dark out but next post for sure.  Today or yesterday or whatever, I have no conception of time right now,  I left Manchester at ten thirty ish two hour flight to DC to catch the international flight to Heathrow England.  I get into DC to get my bag and the whole united baggage claim was filled with around two hundred or so confused/aggravated travelers swarming around one baggage carousel, police tape strung about the majority of the room and about thirty or so trench coated official looking clowns shooting the shit with cops and others of the sort.  I find out from a frazzled man furiously punching away at his blackberry that there was a bomb threat and who knows when anyone will get their bags.  At that point I took out my camera to capture a hazmat suited character slinking around towards the back of the room, only to be harassed and ordered to "PUT THAT AWAY NOTHING TO SEE HERE!"  So after about an hour or so finally got my bag and headed to British airways to check in.  All goes well there and down to second security check of the day standing in line herded like helpless sheep behind this clean cut front hair spiked kid with bright green and tan cowboy kicks and a long black peacoat.  All seems normal and I unload my stuff onto the x ray scanner and walk through the old style scanners right next to a brand new one.  Standing behind this kid waiting for my stuff to come through only to find out his oversized carryon has jammed the machine.  With one guard top half torso inside the machine from one end and another guard on the other with a special TSA cane poking and prodding after twenty minutes the damn is broken and out comes my stuff. what fun ha.  then 4 hour layover a few beers and short conversation with a girl from my group and were on the flight, lucky got an aisle seat. well now a few days after the fact due to hard to find internet I will try to get the rest out...stopped in Heathrow England for a few hours and converged with the rest of the students on the group flights and grabbed a few beers in the airport had a real  good czech lager cant remember the name now but it was great.  then took another two hour flight into rome and unfortunately it was dark out so wasnt able to take any pics there or even see any of the sights on the 2 hour bus ride to Viterbo other than lights scattered along the hillside.  When we arrived in Viterbo we went strait to our first italian dinner and had a first course of bruschetta three kinds: olive tapanade, cucumber, and tomato with sides of grilled zucchini, potato, and eggplant followed by three different kinds of pizza a sauceless one with mint and zucchini, cheese called margarita here just sauce with cheese and cant remember the other kind now.  This is now 6 days after our arrival and I am just now able to post this. This was an unusually long one, I dont anticipate the rest of the posts to be this long. Ciao for now.