And the Journey Begins!

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” 

Lao Tzu

My journey officially started at 3:15 a.m. on August 5, 2018. I said my final goodbyes to my two dogs, Belle and Frankie, which was pretty emotional. (The early wakeup call didn’t help.) Then my parents and I headed to the Minneapolis Airport. We had a little bit of scare at the ticket counter when they said I couldn’t get on the plane without my Visa, but I didn’t have one yet. Eventually, I was able to go because I don’t need a Visa until 90 days after arriving in Germany. (I got my Visa like a week after arriving at my host family.)

Security was an adventure because I got pulled off to the side so they could search my carry on. No worries, nothing was confiscated. Thankfully the rest of my time traveling was fairly smooth (up until Frankfurt, but I’ll get to that soon). I made it to Texas safely and met up with the other exchange students. My flight from Texas was about nine hours long. It was really nice because I got to sit by Caroline and Jonathon, two other exchange students that I had met at our pre-departure orientation. We talked, played battleship, and I was taught how to play Tetris. (I’m really bad at it.)

Once we made it to Frankfurt we had no idea what to do. Imagine a group of 48 exhausted teenagers trying to direct each other in completely opposite directions. Some said we needed to go to customs right away and others said we needed to get our tickets. After about an hour and a half, we figured it out. (I’m not going to lie, I was so tired that I don’t really remember what we ended up doing.) Our flight from Frankfurt to Hannover was really short. By the time I had fallen asleep, we were getting ready to land. After meeting up with a couple of YFU staff members, we were off to our language camp in Osterode am Harz.

After sleeping on the bus to Osterode for about an hour, we finally made it to the Youth Hostel. We got our room assignments and I roomed with Caitlin, Caroline, and Elyssa (the best roommates ever)! I want to say we went over rules and got settled in. Again, all of us were really jetlagged and ready for sleep. Stay tuned to read how Osterode 2018 went!