This past week has been by far the BIGGEST hassle/adventure in the history of study abroad students ever! I already know that no one could possibly top my bittersweet weekend in venice for carnivale. The week started out good, I had no plans of getting on a train to venice or staying in hostels and taking busses and wearing masks and eating outrageously priced meals the following weekend. I was introduced to a girl named Meredith who was living alone and needed a roomate. The school found out we had extra room in our apartment since my roomate sam had left due to a back injury... I've never met this girl and wasn't going to let anyone move into a room with me, so I set up a nice fun evening to meet her and get to know her and test her out. LITTLE DID I KNOW, things went well but were bound to end up in shambles. She had no one to go venice with for carnivale and neither did I so we made plans to go. This is all happening on the thursday before our departure friday morning. She was a sweet girl, (still is) but Im sure if you had the weekend I had you would think differently. First off, Carnivale is a HUGE festival all over italy but mainly in Venice, it is kind of what we Americans call mardi gras. everyone gets dressed up in costumes and masks and parades around town and parties and throw confettie and its just a really cool thing to see. If I recommend going anywhere and for a certain purpose, it's going to Venice for Carnivale. So friday morning our train is leaving at 9:55 SHARP. it takes at least 20 minutes to get to the train station and settled from where I was going to meet Meredith. 8:45 was our meeting time and I was running 10 minutes late  so I called her to tell her I will be there in 2 minutes and I was late... she tells me "your gonna kill me..." Im thinking something tragic happened at she cant go... WORSE, she booked the wrong hostel, and it was no where near venice! So she frantically books 2 new hostels for the weekend. okay fine, do it, I wanna get to venice. So 9:15 comes around and she still isnt there. 9:20...9:30...9:43....9:50...9:52 still no Meredith. Obviously we missed our train. My blood pressure is a little bit above normal at this point. We catch the 11:41 train. We have to switch trains twice, or so i thought. Im not really sure what we had to do. all i know is that we got off at the wrong station to switch trains and had to change our tickets and wait ANOTHER half hour for the next one. We arrive in Florence which was where we had to get a direct train to venice. A eurostar in fact, and if anyone is familiar about them they are small and very expensive with assigned seats and carts and if your american your always sitting in someone elses seat because you were never aware you had a certain seat and on a certain cart on the train. We are waiting in florence for the train and it is supposed to be arriving in 5 minutes. I notice that the train next to us is on the screen saying it is ontime and it is arriving in 2 hours, but our train is not here and it is leaving in 5 minutes. Someone comes on the loud speaker and i cant understand a word they are saying and i see someone on the same platform as us start running. then another person.. and another person and im starting to think that maybe our train swtiched platforms. FINALLY, the english lady comes on and says Train ______ departing for Venice on track 3 is leaving in 2 minutes from track 9. surely, we start running to other side of the florence train station, probably the biggest train station in Italy next to Rome. We step foot on the train and it starts moving away. So we find our assigned seats after sitting in about 4 wrong ones and settle down.  we arive in venice at about 6ish or so in Mestre, which is outside of venice. we have to take a bus to our hotel... we wait, get on, get off, check in and find our room. the bedroom is so small the door doesnt even open all the way, and we have to share a bathroom with the entire floor. needless to say thank god i brought my baby wipes because i didnt shower the entire weekend. We decide it's late and we're hungry so instead of going to venice we will jus hang around the center of the city and see what there is to do. No one really told us that there is NOTHING to do but they did tell us to get on the number 9 or 10 bus to get there. so we wait for 20 minutes, no bus except the number 9 and we get on. It is the last stop and the bus driver notices we are still on and he asks us where we are trying to go and we say the center of the city. He says "mio dio non questi autobus, numero dieci!" so he speeds up like a maniac and tracks down the #10 and makes him stop and we get on the #10. We get to the center and find a restaraunt and i had the BEST pizza i have ever had in my entire stay in Italy! we finish and we start to head to the bus stop to get back to the hotel... We wait... and wait and wait and no bus.. so we start to walk to the restaraunt to call a taxi, sure enough the bus rolls by and there we go running again. luckily we got on, and after about 20 minutes of driving in circles and passing the restaraunt again, we make it back to the hotel. We go to bed and decide to wake up at 8 am sat morning. We woke up, had breakfast and checked out and went to find our other hotel that we were staying in sat night. We wait for the bus, and we wait and wait and wait like usual and finally get on a bus and we go to the airport, from the airport we have to take a bus to the hotel. We get on and have no clue where to get off or if we are even going in the right direction so we ask the bus driver. He tells us we are on the wrong bus and need to go back to the airport and to get off this stop, walk a few blocks and catch the bus at that stop. AS IF WE COULDNT GET ON ENOUGH WRONG BUSES. so we walk, and at this point, my blood pressure is just beyond through the roof. Im about one more bus away from getting back on that train and going home. So we get on, head to the airport, get on a new bus, and check in to our new hotel which is a camp site in the middle of the winter next to mountains with snow caps all over them. pretty scenery but i thought campsites were for the summer time? I dunno maybe thats just the American thing...We settle in and get on a bus to venice. its around 12pm. another word of advice, if you go to venice, bite your tongue and pay for a 300 dollar hotel because chances are it is right in the center of everything and you dont have to take trains and busses anywhere.  I stumbled off the bus in relief and was taken aback at how amazing it was. Definitly love at first sight. i want to move there one day. It looks like a fake little town exactly like it does in the pictures. Best city  I've visited thus far. I stop at the atm to take out my funds for the weekend... 100$ and out the window that went.. 40 minutes later im at the next atm  and there went that money too. It was about a 2 or 300 dollar weekend. and believe me, (i know its hard to) but i spent MINIMALLY!  the way these people get dressed and parade around town in their costumes was just amazing. some of the costumes were so ellaborate they were breath taking. Couples get dressed up and match or whole families dressed up and tons of mothers torture their daughters in frilly lacey dresses and masks and I know that would be me 15 years ago if my family lived in italy. my mom would throw me out their like a porcelain doll.  HAHA, as would I to my daughter...ANYWAY, we walked around St. Marks Square, Rialto bridge down by the grand canal and took a boat taxi and everything was breathtaking. I didnt want to leave. My goal in life is to come back to Venice one day and dress the way some of these people do. It was crazy! they would walk around and people would stop them to take pictures of them or with them and some never stopped because they knew their costumes were so good that if they stopped they would never leave that spot. i put my mask on and sure enough 2 cute little old men came up to me and wanted to take pics with me because they thought i was part of the festivites. i was loving every minute of it until they asked me if i wanted to go drink some whiskey so i quickly grabbed Meredith and we ran away. HAHAHA everyone kept asking me for directions too, I guess i fit in pretty well over here but I had to let them down easy and say i was american and  had no clue where they were trying to go. LOL. so the day came to an end, sadly, so we headed home to our hostel on the campsite! 5 words.. BLUE LIPS THE NEXT MORNING! We had nooooooooooo heat!  i barely slept, i was frozen and my body was sore from being curled up in a ball. I got up and 7am because i wanted to get the hell out of there. wouldnt you know its just not that easy. Meredith left her shoes at the hotel the previous night and the buses only run every hour on the hour. our train was at 9:43 and we would have never made it to the hotel to get her shoes and then to the trainstation. so we had to call a taxi and pay 35 dollars. we got her 6 dollar, beat up, ugly shoes and we got to the train station on time. To ensure we didnt get ripped off and got the cheapest train possible we used the machine instead of a teller. The line was out the door anyway because everyone was trying to leave. I get my ticket and it is 9:10 and the train got bumped up to 9:20. i pay and i have my ticket in my hand, WHICH NEVER FELT SO GOOD, and Meredith tells me her machine wont work, so i calmly walk over to her and show her my ticket and say I AM GETTING ON THIS TRAIN AT 9:20 YOU BETTER FIND A WAY TO COME WITH ME NOW. not a single syllable was not pronounced. we got on the train and made our first stop to switch trains a few hours later. It was 1:25 and the train we needed to get on was leaving at 1:14 but i didnt know it was 1:25 and i didnt know our train arrived late. so i go to the teller and ask her which train gets me to perugia because the boards are always confusing and changing. she tells me the 1:14 train but its 10 minutes late. me thinking that its only about 1 anyway i think i have enough time for the bathroom but something tells me inside NOT to go and jus get on the train. so we do so and suprisingly the train is there and im excited because the train isnt late and this is so good something is finally going right and wouldnt you know as soon as we step on the train starts leaving. THANK GOD and every angel and saint in the sky for blessing me with an insinct and getting me home from that hellhole of a weekend. I burst through my doors, threw my bags and clothes down and took an hour shower and went to the banglasdesh store to get food because everything else is closed on sundays. my day couldnt have gotten any worse when all i wanted was a sandwich, and they didnt even have the right turkey and asked me what kind of proscuitto i wanted, and they didnt have it and it was just a mess, i just said suprise me and i bought skippy peanut butter, and endulged the rest of the day in my bed RELIEVED to be home.