I safely arrived at my apartment at the wonderful hour of midnight. After almost 24hrs of flying, I pretty much just fell onto my bed, I was so exhausted.
The first leg of my trip was great. I took a 10-hr flight from Seattle to Amsterdam and while it was long, it still was pretty nice. After arriving in Amsterdam I had an 8-hr layover. So, my friends, David, Stefanie, and Sarah, and I got on a train and went into the Amsterdam.
On the train ride, we met two people (we never learned their names) who were really nice. They knew we were American and talked to us for the 10min ride. They recommended going to the Red Light District (which we didn't do) and helped us find our way from the station to the city. We wandered around a lot, and took pictures of all the different buildings, and just had a bunch of fun.
Once we got back to the airport, we ran into a snag. My friends and I had rented a locker to put our carry-on things in, which seems super smart, right? Well, it turns out that to get our boarding pass for the flight from Amsterdam to Amman, we had to show the sticker you get when you check-in, that shows that your checked back has been checked all the way through. Anyway, the aforementioned sticker was super important, and every one's was in the lockers.....except mine. I took my backpack with me to the city, and had put a bunch of stuff in it, and I happened to have my sticker, so I was able to get my boarding pass just fine. You'd think it wouldn't be that big of a deal to go down a floor to get to the lockers, but we had to go through security again to get to where the lockers were, which we couldn't do without a boarding pass. So I end up going through, get the sticker from the locker, and am then supposed to find my way back to where my friends were waiting. Only problem with that is the fact that I have an incredible gift when it comes to getting lost. Long story short, I was lost, wandering around the airport for 20-30 minutes before I figured out how to get back to my friends. It was exhausting (since this was running on 5 hours of sleep and had gone through a bunch of time zone changes and my body was playing 'catch-up'), and I was just grumpy by the time everything got worked out.
The flight to Jordan was great, very uneventful and relaxing....even though I didn't get any sleep.
So, I get to my apartment at midnight, zonk out right away, and then my eyes popped open at about 5:30am, and I couldn't fall back asleep. We had an orientation meeting, and then were taken on a walking tour of parts of Amman (the walking tour happening, of course, during the hottest part of the day), which has resulted in even more exhaustion, dirty feet, and possibly some blisters.
Classes start on Tuesday, so things are just going to start getting crazier and harder. I don't want to think about that just yet, so right now, I'm off to take a much needed nap.
No comments:
Post a Comment