Today was a very long day to say the least. We left Tampa airport at 11 A.M. and did not arrive in Rome until 1 A.M. Tampa time, or 7 A.M. Rome time, meaning we had about 15 more hours to be awake that day. When we arrived in Rome, the airport was not what I expected. Media had falsely led me to imagine the airport as an ancient building in the middle of one of the most historic cities on earth. Instead, we landed in an area heavily concerned with farming. There’s already one thing I have learned about international relations: media can be deceiving.

We took our full scale charter bus and headed for our hotel. We dropped our stuff off and Josh, our tour guide, told us the Pope would be speaking today. We wandered around the Vatican and some parts of surrounding Rome where I got to notice some subtle differences between Italy and America. One, smoking is a much more common practice in Italy, a lot more common. Second, there are no large sized vehicles. The price of gas being so high and the complete lack of parking besides parallel parking have lead most to move to mopeds or gas-efficient cars. Third, I didn’t know Italy also had their steering wheel on the left side. I thought they were one of the countries that had it on the right side.  Fourth, the phrase “yield to pedestrians” is nonexistent here. If you are in the way of a car, they will hit you. If you have the green light to walk across the street, they will hit you. Fifth, wait staff is paid a real wage, so you don’t tip as heavily as you do in America. Sixth, the culture is so rich. You can feel a friendlier vibe as you walk down the streets, still being aware of the crazy cars. The people are very welcoming and always saying hello.  They are not as fast-paced as Americans, and it is a nice change. All of these changes relate to international relations by just proving that there are still a lot of things that countries don’t know about each other, making it harder to really work well together. You have to understand the other nation’s differences to really understand them. After hearing the Pope speak and going to a nice lunch, we got dressed to go to mass at St. Peter’s Basilica. To my complete amazement, the pope attends the service!! We ended up not just simply being in the same room as the man in charge of the Catholic faith, but being a mere 10 feet from him! Summing it all up, today shows that the rest of the trip is going to be amazing.