Arrivederci America!

Big, ugly sobs.  Big, loud, ugly, audible sobs.  The kind where my snot is sticking to Chris’ shoulder and he’s having to give passers-by the “She’ll be ok” nod as they stare in horror.  Did someone just die?  Or perhaps an appendage has been wrenched from my body?  No.  We’re at the airport and we just gave our fat cat to TSA to travel to Italy with us in the cargo area of the plane.  Yes, my big, loud, ugly, audible sobs are in sympathy for a cat.

And so our journey begins…

I’ll go ahead and skip to the end to let you know that the fat cat made it across the pond in one live fat piece.  A little shaken, perhaps, but otherwise no worse for the wear.  Surely due to the karma that my incessant worrying produced.

We humans made it across the water alright as well, only after a surprise 9-hour layover at JFK allowed us (with the fat cat) to check into a hotel and get some rest and freshening up.  Then, at 1:05am eastern time, we departed from America.

Because the plane was 7 hours late getting to JFK, most of the would-be passengers had found other options, so the flight was practically empty.  I delighted in scoring an entire row of 4 seats all to myself.  I folded up all the armrests,  stuffed 3 airline pillows into a sweatshirt, spread 2 airline blankets on me, shoved in wax earplugs, popped 2 Tylenol PMs, strapped on my eye mask, and was OUT.  Six hours later, I woke up to a breakfast of espresso and Milano cookies and soon after, we landed in Rome.  Not too shabby.

Our 3-hour layover in the Rome airport was spent wandering the endless terminals, shopping for converters (great success), and attempting to purchase our first meal in Italian (mild success).  I enjoyed my first gelato (single scoop of dark chocolate in a waffle cone – delicious success!).

On the Alitalia Airlines flight to from Rome to Catania, I discovered what will most likely be a reoccurring theme: Familiarity Italian.  I at first took great pride in ordering water and cookies from the flight attendant all in Italian (me: “Acqua per favore.”  Her: “Biscotti, something in Italian, something in Italian?”  Me: hmm…I know ‘biscotti’ is a cookie; I like cookies, “Biscotti, grazie.”  Score.)  I did a little mental happy dance at not having to revert to English like the woman two rows in front of me.  But then I started to wonder what my other food options were.  Don’t get me wrong, the biscotti was scrumptious.  But would I have been more satisfied with something else?  And I usually order water on airplanes anyway, but since the words for water and orange juice are the only Italian beverage vocabulary words in my current repertoire, those were my only options.  See? – Familiarity Italian.  Not that that’s a bad thing.  I’m happy just to be using Italian at all.  But I see a lot of water (acqua), orange juice (succo d’arancia), espresso (espresso), cookies (biscotti), getalo (gelato), and croissants (cornettos) in my future.  Again, yum, not necessarily a bad thing.  Familiarity Italian is safe, but also not as exciting as my plan for the near future: Saying Yes to, and Ordering by Pointing at, Unknown Italian.  Stay tuned.

Fat cat and I at JFK

Gelato! in the Rome airport

Fat cat explores the balcony at our hotel in Catania.