Travel Days

These past three days have been an absolute whirlwind. There has hardly been a spare minute for me to collect my thoughts, let alone do a blog post. But it may be beneficial to be so busy, since there is less time to feel homesick.

Yesterday I moved into the apartment where I will be living for the whole semester. I currently am living there with two other girls, even though one girl will be moving to a host family on Wednesday. The apartment is super convenient because it is right across the street from the school. Most of the other girls have to take a bus to the school, so I’m very grateful I got a spot in the apartment. There are also two grocery stores within walking distance, so that is great. The apartment is very big, and I even have my own room. There are two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. We had a very first meal today as well. We eat at another school that is right next to the apartment. The whole weekend has been extremely hard, because we didn’t have anything to eat! We were promised three meals a day, but that did not happen the first three days we were here.  My body has slowly been decaying, but now hopefully it will be better now that we’re getting  meals.

My room:

The first couple days of travel went well. Even though we had a few hiccups before we even left Salt Lake. Camee forgot her ipod before we went through security, then Maggie left her carry-on at the security area after we went through. The flight to Chicago was fine, but the airport in Chicago is insane! It is very large, widespread, and incredibly busy and crowded at all hours. We had no idea how to get to our terminal and wandered around for a while. Luckily, we saw our flight attendant from the flight, and she was able to give us directions. Once we got to the terminal, we hung out for a bit until the flight to Stockholm. The flight overseas wasn’t actually that bad at all. Maggie and I were in a four person row, but we were the only ones there. So we got to spread out a little and there was nice in-flight entertainment. It didn’t feel that long at all.

Once we got to Stockholm, we rented some lockers to put our stuff in and took a train to the city. Stockholm was very beautiful and cool. It was just hard to appreciate it more when we were all so tired and cold. It is freezing here! I feel like I should have brought a heavier winter coat, because it has been terrible. But we still soldiered on and walked around for a few hours and took pictures before we went back to the airport.

It was not a good time, and the worst travel part by far. The flight to Vilnius is only an hour and a half, but our flight was delayed two hours. By that point we were all so exhausted and just wanted to sleep! There is absolutely on indoor heating in Europe, and the airport was freezing. So the sophisticated Swedes got to see all these Americans lying over benches and huddling up in blankets and coats. But we made it eventually!  The Lithuanian airport was very tiny and deserted. We didn’t see anyone there besides the people getting off our flight. Not even any workers. It was so spooky!  But luckily all our luggage was waiting on the carousel, and we didn’t have to deal with any lost bags.  Dima picked us up and took us to a temporary apartment until the Spring girls left on Sunday.

Here are some pictures of Old Town from when we walked around there on Saturday.

I will do another post about what we did once we got there! I miss you guys!