So much has happened already! Please excuse the jumbled mess of this post. My brain is still scrambled from all the things ive seen and learned the last few days.
My first experience travelling overseas was....interesting.
I arrived at Jacksonville International Airport at 11 am. My flight did not leave until 2pm, so already, I would have a long wait. Then my flight was delayed almost 2 hours, meaning I would probably miss my connector flight- where I would meet up with Regine (German professor) and many of the students going on the trip. I didn’t really mind the long wait. Being alone in an airport is one of my favorite feelings; however, I was not excited about possibly having to wait a whole extra day before arriving in Berlin. Luckily, by the time I got my carryon and made it of the plane, I had 10 minutes to catch a shuttle to the terminal and find my gate. I made it with 5 minutes to spare.
The plane ride was interesting. I have never been on one that big before, or that showed movies. Unfortunately, this combined with my leftover anxiety about catching the flight, meant I would not sleep on the 7 hour plane ride. Jet-lag would get the best of me.
Being awake the whole flight also meant I was one of the only people awake when the plane flew over Ireland. I was SO excited. I wanted to look out the window SO bad, but I was afraid of waking up other passengers.
By the time we landed in Berlin, I was a zombie. I could not grasp that it was actually 8 in the morning- let alone that I was in a foreign country.
We had a tour of Berlin. Our tour guide was fantastic and I learned a lot about Germany during the cold war. Im super excited to learn more history!
Also, its only been 3 days but I have learned so much of the language already. This is very surprising to me because I studied spanish for a long time and had some wonderful teachers but I never quite made it to an advanced level. I have always had trouble with languages- english included; but a few days here and I already know my numbers, days of the week, colors, how to conjugate some verbs, and some key phrases. For the first time, I feel like I can actually learn a language.
In my next post, I will hopefully be able to get more in depth with what actually happened my first couple days. For now, here are some photos:
