For those of you who would like a brief summary of my experience so far well here it goes all others who want the finest of details skip ahead to the next paragraph or do what you want. So I've been in Sweden for about a week and a half now. I had a wonderful departure with a going away party a week before where I got to say goodbye to a lot of my friends and family. I had a great last week and after having a great last night of saying goodbye to my friends I was ready to go. I had some flight changes and instead of going from Portland to Washington to Copenhagen to Gothenburg, I went from Portland to Washington to Munich to Gothenburg. My family has been great, the food is delicious, and I've been golfing, swimming, and water-skiing. I'm headed to language camp next week with a bunch of other exchange students in Sweden, which is good because I get to meet everyone and I really need help learning Swedish and then after that I start school.
Now for the details
So the Saturday before I left my parents threw a big going away party. There was wonderfully delicious food, some Kan Jam, a bonfire and it was great to visit with everyone and say goodbye. There was a lot of people who showed up I think around 50 to 60 people came by. A lot of my friends showed up and family friends and family. It was all in all a great day.
Over the next week things were very busy. I was able to be with and say goodbye to my brother Shawn the rest of the weekend before he went back to work. Then the rest of the week was filled with packing and preparing for the trip even though I didn't have my visa or plane ticket yet but I needed to be prepared in case. Tuesay afternoon I received an email saying that my visa had been approved and I quickly started talking to my travel agent and the next thing I knew I had a ticket and a travel itinerary. On Friday at 220 I was going to fly From Portland to Washington D.C. I would have an hour and a half wait then my next plane would go to Copenhagen for another hour and a half weight then I would be in Gothenburg around 9 o'clock in the morning their time. This sounded wonderful to me and it suddenly became very real that I was leaving. At first without knowing when I was leaving it didn't seem that real but then I was hit with a variety of emotions and I was very anxious. Then over the next few days I finished packing and visited with people. My last night was wonderful I was able to see a lot of my friends and was able to say some wonderful goodbyes. As I came home that night I had a sad feeling that I was saying goodbye to my friends and family for a long time and good feeling that this was finally going to happen and I realized that in just a day and a half I would be in Sweden.
The next day my parents took me to the airport we checked in with no problems and everything seemed great. But when we checked the flight schedule the flight had been very delayed. Apparently there was a broken piece on the plane they had taken it off another plane, put it on and the flight was going to leave. Although this would mean that the plane would be about 2 hours late for leaving which would mean I would miss my connection to Copenhagen. I was bale to change my flight to Munich Germany although this would mean that I would have close to a 7 hour layover there. My flight drew near I said goodbye to my family, headed through security and I was off.
I arrived in Washington on the new correct time and it was about 98 degrees. I got some food and got on the plane and was ready to leave seeing as inside the plane there was around 150 people and it was about 95 degrees. So I was ready for my first international flight to be off the ground mostly so they could cool the plane down. As we were headed to the runway we stopped and the captain informed us that there was a thunderstorm around new york City and they had to redirect traffic so we had to wait until it was our time to leave. Unfortunately it was still 95 degrees and the Germans and the crying baby behind me and I weren't getting any happier. So 2 hours later we were off, luckily I had such along layover that the wait didn't affect me but other people were worried about their connecting flights. So as we neared the atlantic I was able to see this storm that had affected our flight leaving, and I had a window seat. As I gazed out my window to my left was a beautiful sunset with big puffy clouds beneath it, to my right was a very dark but magnificient storm cloud. I was actually eye level with this storm and the lighting. I watched as the bolts came crashing out of the sky almost simultaneously. It was a wonderful show and much more enjoyable to watch then the on flight movie. The rest of the plane ride was fairly uneventful with some okay food, some okay movies, and a couple hours of sleep. As we began our decent I was able to see a bit of the german country side with little white houses with red roofs in bunches surrounded by farmland. Then I arrived in the beautiful Munich airport, with a lot of BMW's, Audi's, and Mercedes Benz, a lot of germans, and not a lot of english. So I bought something that looked like eggs and sausage which turned out to be some type of potato salad and sausage patties and payed a ridiculous amount of euros for it, although it was actually very good. Then I tried to find my way over to the other terminal where there was a lounge I could relax in for a couple of hours. I found my way over there and had a few snacks, some German orange cola and relaxed and went on the computer for a little while and dealed with the very strange German bathroom. I made my way back to the next terminal, although the bus driver missed my stop so I quickly made my way across the whole entire terminal and caught the next bus. I got on the plane and I was on my way. Realizing that I was almost there and that everyone on the plane was speaking Swedish and I wasn't understanding very much of it I began to panic a little. I listened to some music and my panicking turned into excitement.
to be continued........
