Finally made it to the farm.

Yesterday morning I woke up at 6am (Seattle time) and headed to the airport for the first flight of my adventures! I flew from Seattle to Philadelphia and then from there straight to Rome. I met a lot of cool people on the plane and they were all more than willing to tell me secret things to do in the city. I got off the plane around 9:30am (Rome time) and after hours of taking the train (and admittedly taking the wrong one once) I got picked up from the train station by Daniel and taken to the farm! The house and the farm are wonderful. The house is big and brick, surrounded with tall skinny trees and with sweeping views of the Italian hillside. My room has a spiral staircase so I feel really fancy every time I walk up them. The walls are covered with bookcases, crammed with every type of book you can imagine. Claudio and Michelle are husband and wife, Daniel is their son, and they are all very welcoming. They have a small cat and an adorable golden retriever that I'm excited to become best friends with. It is only 6:45pm here, but I am so exhausted I feel like I'm permanently on a boat because my vision is swaying so much. Goodnight from Italy!

Four days until take off!

I have four days left until I leave Seattle to embark on my adventure, and it's much more stressful than I thought. I've been excited for months to leave and now that it's getting down to packing and pulling everything together, I'm realizing I have no idea how to pack for a five month journey! My plan for the next five months covers many different climates so it is really hard to pack lightly when I need to pack so many different things. I will first arrive in Rome and spend 3 weeks in Orvieto {about an hour outside of Rome}, taking the train into Rome on the weekend to see sights and stay in hostels. Next I will go to Venice where I will spend 5 days seeing the city. I fly from Venice to France where I will work on a farm for 3 weeks {hopefully with Finnean!} and then spend a week in Paris {also hopefully with Finnean}. From Paris I fly into Bangkok, and will take the train to a farm in southern Thailand. I will stay here for three weeks and then travel back to Bangkok where I will meet Bailey and spend a week in the city. We will be there for the Thai new year and the festival that accompanies it, Songkran. Bailey and I will next go to Nepal where we will trek the Langtang trail for two weeks and spend about a week in Kathmandu. From Nepal I fly to Hawaii where I will spend a whole month working on a farm, hiking the Napali coast, learning to surf, and relaxing. Five months seems like an extremely long time to be away from home, the longest I've ever been gone is 3 weeks, but I'm sure it will go by extremely fast. I'm counting down the hours until my departure.