Let me tell you that when you're jet lagged from a flight to DC and you never get the time to recover, well you don't recover very quickly. Tuesday was a very long day in DC that consisted of mostly meetings and speeches, not very interesting.
On Tuesday, the hottest day in history, we all walked around The Mall in DC all the way from the Smithsonian, museum of Natural history down to the Lincoln memorial, which is an incredibly long walk when the humidity is 99.9% and it's 92 degrees outside. It was pretty cool though, I got a bunch of pictures of ducks at the WW2 memorial.
We got to Dulles airport around noon on Friday, after being at the Smithsonian, and waited for the check in stations to open for over an hour. Finally we all got our bags checked, I only checked one bag at the check in and it weight 22.6 kilos, you're overweight if it's 23 kilos. I did a victory dance along with almost everyone else in the same boat.
We bypassed the long security line, but I did have to go through the radiation scanner, which gave me a splitting migraine that I did not enjoy. I ended up getting a pesto panini which was amazing, then had to gate check one of my carry-ons, which thank god, was free.
First time ever on an international flight and I almost had a panic attack when I saw my seat. YFU bought our tickets and so of course they picked the cheapest ones. We were all spread out in the very middle section. Luckily my whole row of 4 was YFU people, unfortunately I was stuck in the middle, and my headphone jack on my seat didn't work so I couldn't watch a movie at all. But I dealt with it alright for the most part.
My plane left DC at 3 in the afternoon on thursday. I did not get more than 20 minutes of sleep on the plane, which wasn't great. Eight hours later we landed in Frankfurt at 5 in the morning. We bypassed customs which was a relief, and then had to accompany the rest of the 19 people catching another flight, I was one of the two who didn't have to. The lady leading us around had no idea what was going on it was rather frightening.
Once we got our bags we found out we still had three hours to wait before the next flight came in and everybody else showed up. So we waited...and waited...and drank coffee...and tried to communicate with the thai students, failing pretty epically.
Once everybody was there we carted our bags, (we each had at least 2 rolling suitcases and a heavy backpack) through the airport only to find that the escalator down to the train didn't work. So we lugged our 50 lbs bags down two flights of stairs and landed in a big tangled pile at the bottom. It was entertaining to say the least. We piled ourselves onto the S train and all fell over when it started moving.
We got off at Frankfurt main train station and hung out for half an hour for the regional train that would take us to Koblenz(?), and me to wherever it is that I got off. I got off half an hour early and met three fourths of my host family. They are great! Driving back to their house was a little nerve wracking since it was a twisty little narrow road and we were (I swear) going faster than 30 mph which the little dashboard said.
Ten minutes later we pulled into the tiny little village, there's another one about two hundred yards down the road/hill hahahah I found that amusing. Dinner was good, I'll post pictures!! I've got my own room and bathroom which is really nice. My family is great! :)
Shopping tomorrow!!
Another new thought, they drink soda water here, like instead of water...it's so strange.
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Jet Lagged Teen
check out my gallery! (in the process of creating and uploading)
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