I wouldn't even count day 20 as a day in Italy because all we did was travel for 24 hours. We arrived at the airport at 4:30am for our fligh at 6:15, however the airport was closed! I guess it closes between midnight and 5am, so we had to wait until we could check in and what not. After it was all said and done we checked in, said our goodbyes and went through security. Mack won the grand prize of potential terrorist so he got stopped (picture below). Other than that we went right on our way to Rome. In Rome we had quite the journey finding our gate because the roman airport is super long and spaced out, so we arrived at terminal A and had to go to terminal G which was a 15 minute walk and a short tram ride away. After killing several hours we were in route to LA, only 13 hours away. Mack and I sadly couldn't get seats next to each other, the plane was pretty old and the people sitting to my right and left were annoying and had no sense of personal space, long story short it was a long 13 hours but we finally made it! The LA airport was pretty cool. Side note: picture of ciccio's mom, Ciccio and I below, with picture of Catania from the plane. In LA we went through customs and it was a lot easier than I thought It would be (although not as easy as Italian customs because he just stamped the passport while he was busy playing on his iPhone). We had almost 5 hours to kill so my first American meal was Chinese along with the biggest soda Ive ever gotten filled with root beer!
On the flight from LA to Phoenix the clouds looked amazing and it was by far the best flight of the trip because the plane was small, the flight attendants were super nice, and it was so short! Mack slept for most of it but I talked to the flight attendant and just looked out the widow for most of it.
Once we arrived it was nice to see my family right outside security holding up signs! Baggage claim was nice and quick and we were finally home. It's a bitter sweet feeling being home, Italy truly was amazing and I loved every day from playing video games in Italian to walking around Rome to mini cliff diving, every day was exciting. I had the time of my life and I'd like to thank my grandparents and parents for helping me have the opportunity to do this, along with sister cities for allowing me to participate in the program! There's of course more people id like to thank but it's pretty much everyone reading this blog so thank you for your help and reading the blog! While that was sister cities foreign half of the program I will probably still make a few blogs about the hosting time in Phoenix! So check back if you'd like to hear about all the adventures we take Ciccio on in Phoenix during July 14-28 (that's the hosting calendar but he's actually here from July 7th to July 28th).