The Joy of Traveling

We’ve made it to Rome! The following pictures should give you an idea of our travels up to this point and the adventures we’ve had already.

Here Brendan sits with his Dad, Pat Egan, by the fire in their house. So charming ;) We spent a fun few last days with him in Rochester – finishing up packing and final details, cooking up a storm, and having card nights with him, Gus, and Cathy. We also were able to spend some time with Brendan’s friends Jarrid and John. And the last few hours in Rochester were spent watching the Viking’s game (which got painful at the end….). We finally headed out on Sunday afternoon. Pat was awesome and drove us to the airport in Minneapolis and we were off!



In the Minneapolis airport, Brendan and I discovered these sweet umbrella advertisements for something or another. There was an umbrella on a screen made out of tiny red umbrellas, but when you walked by and were caught in the light the umbrellas moved like they would if you were actually pushing them out of the way. Cheap entertainment is a beautiful thing.

Soon we were boarding our plane for our 8 hour flight to Amsterdam. Neither of us were able to sleep at all, but we did watch movies and listen to music to pass the time. I saw Disney’s Hercules for the first time ever and it was pretty good I must say.

Tired and getting more tired by the minute we arrived in Amsterdam 10 am their time, 3 am our time. Our plane had been delayed so we waited for a few hours before we were ready to go. Finally our Alitalia plane arrived and we got underway.

The short flight went well. Ok, I don’t actual remember anything, as I passed out from exhaustion. As soon as I sat down I was out, and the next thing I know we were landing.

So we were finally in Roma, Italia! After waiting an obscene amount of time for our luggage to come we made it out into the sun, where Sister Pat was waiting for us.

We didn’t last long when we got to the volunteer house. After a quick tour, Brendan was asleep by 5:30pm (as he hadn’t slept a wink in 24 hours). I was able to go to Mass with the Sisters at 6:00 in their chapel. It was all in Italian, but I could pick out many of the words that looked like Spanish words, which helped a lot. All the Sisters were very welcoming, especially Sister Pat and Sister Anna Florinda who is from Timor. I’m hoping that she will be helping us to learn Tetum (the native language of Timor) over the next few months so that we have some exposure to the language before we get there.

But as soon as Mass was over, I stumbled back to the volunteer house and fell asleep. And what a good sleep it was!