DAY FOUR: TRIP TO IKEA

i woke up today around noon, ate a bowl of cereal and went to ikea with tony, reid, brenton, his fiance laurel, and kristen (laurel's roommate). we took a taxi to ikea where i bought a non-crappy pillow, and a badass comforter, (i'll try to post a picture of it), a rug, etc. we then got outside and tony asked laurel how are we going to get back. she didn't know. we then tried to call taxi sevices with the help from ikea personel, but to no avail. we then heard of a bus stop across the highway that would take us to a metro station that would get us closer (that's where ikea is located by the highway). we crossed the highway with our bags of ikea stuff only to find out that the bus stop is not there, and where ever this mystery bus stop was it was a 50 minute walk. we never found this bus stop. at the gas station across the highway we all got water and i bought a map so we might have a chance to get back home. we then crossed the highway again and went back to ikea where some stayed outside and others tried calling phone numbers on an emergancy card given to us on orientation day. all the numbers on the card are COMPLETE crap. no one would answer the phone. so with daylight disappearing we decided to walk the 15 miles back home. we started out walking on the shoulder of the highway until we finally reach a residential neighborhood that was a little sketchy. we walked more than two-thirds of the way back before we finally could flag the first taxi we saw. the cab driver could only take 5 of the 6 of us so tony, reid, and i decided to walk the rest of the way. the cab driver pointed to the other side of the road where there was supposed to be a cab caller. yeah it didn't work. so we found a pizzaria right next to it and ate our first meal of the day. we finally flagged down a cab and got home. good thing we didn't try to walk it. it would have taken us another 3 hours. so the moral of the story is don't go to ikea which is 15 miles out of the centeral part of rome on a sunday with no map, a bad emerency phone card, and no way to get home. otherwise you'll be walking home.