Planning trips are not as easy as I thought...

So the reason I did not write last night was because I was completely stressed out with planning my trip to Auschwitz. I was trying to book this trip from 6 p.m.-1 a.m. off and on. At first I thought planning trips would be relatively easy. Pick a flight, pick a place to stay, transportation and voila, it'd be all ready to go.

Three other girls and I are going on this trip. Yelena found flights from Rome to Krakow, Poland for 45 euro which is about 57 dollars, which isn't bad at all for a flight. So we booked it. Wrong decision.

After we booked it we started looking for trains from Florence to Rome. Then we looked for hostels in Krakow. We had luck with the latter and not so much with the former.

We got a hostel for two nights for 17 American dollars for each person. It looks cute too. I thought hostels were all like bunk beds and small like dorm rooms.

Here's a link to where I will be staying: http://www.hostelbookers.com/hostels/poland/krakow/4924/

Now that we had that booked, Kate and I began the search for trains again. This is what drained everything out of me. All trains stop running at 9:00. Oh and another thing — everything here is in military time. So I'm learning to use that now too.

So if we leave at 9 p.m. we get at the Rome main airport at 11:00 p.m. Here's the kicker. The main airport is not what we fly out of. We fly out of a small airport 20-30 minutes away and we can only get there by bus. Oh wait, our flight is at 6:30 A.M. and the buses don't start running until 4:30 A.M. So it looks like we're spending the night at the Rome main airport. HELLO COFFEE!!

Other than that, everything will hopefully, HOPEFULLY go smoothly. Everything always works out in the end — that's what my motto always is, but last night I could not get those words through my head.

On the bright side, I'm going to Auschwitz!! I'm so excited. Today in class my Italian teacher had us ask each other questions — in Italian, obviously — as an exercise, and someone asked me where I was going to travel. I said Auschwitz, and Nicoletta, my teacher, was very interested and told me I had to tell her about it when I got back.

A look into the past: I've always enjoyed learning about the Holocaust in school. Now don't take that the wrong way. I wish the events never happened, but I've always been interested in the subject. When we had to read Ann Frank's diary in the eighth grade, I read it from cover to cover. When we learned about it in history, I was always paying attention. I've only seen black and white pictures, so to put this into real life is going to be unreal. I've been told it's a really hard journey to go through this camp, and I can only imagine.

I've been to the Holocaust Museum in D.C. twice. Once in the 10th grade and once this past summer. The first time I was in it forever, and this past year I was with Kory and I made him look at everything.

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Today in my Art History class we started our ventures around Florence. This class is going to be fun because for almost every class we are outside of the classroom. Our teacher takes us around town and shows us sculptures and plazas and tells us the history behind it all.

I find history fascinating and listening to him talk about the history of where I was standing was very interesting. I felt knowledgeable too because yesterday in the Genius of Florence, another class, we had learned a little bit about the history of the city, so when my Art History teacher was asking a few questions, I knew something.

Growing up in America, you learn about some history about Europe, but mainly you learn about America — obviously. So learning about another country's past was new to me, and I liked it.

Another happy note: I think I'm finally finding my way around the city and know where I am. It only took me about a week and a half to figure it out, no big deal.