The Flight

FLAPS! FLAPS!

Anyway. I haven't slept in 27 going on 28 hours as I write this. I suppose there are upsides to being so ridiculously tired that you don't care what comes out of your mouth. I met ALL the people from my program when I got to Berlin.

But how DID I get there?

Mom dropped me off at the Detroit metro airport around 3:45PM on Monday, January 7th, where I realized that going off on my own was a lot scarier than I had anticipated. There was a mother with a little boy in the security check line ahead of me. Her husband and two other sons stood outside the roped off area and followed the mother and the little boy as far as they could. The entire time one of the sons, a boy with autism, stood sobbing  "bye, mommy, bye" over and over again. The mother was crying too and kept running back to hug her son. It was heartbreaking to watch.

I flew Lufthansa, the leading German airline in Germany and outside Germany too. I ended up on the aisle in the center four of a packed flight. The girl next to me was from Switzerland and had just been to the States to visit a friend who was studying abroad at Milan High School (Michigan). Her name was Afsa, and she told me how her dad was from the Congo and has 24 half siblings and 9 full siblings,  leaving him with a grand total of 33 siblings. And I thought Dad being the youngest of 13 was crazy.

I watched a documentary on the Giants winning the super bowl later year and the Bourne Legacy, with Jeremy Renner. I felt extremely accomplished when I ordered "wasser und cola" in German. For one, brilliant instant, I had the flight attendant fooled into thinking I was German. Then she said something else and all the German I had ever known flew out of my head. I stared at her dumbly until she said something in English. My moment of shining glory, gone.

The plane landed safely, thank goodness. I put it down to the fact that my brain was screaming "flaps! flaps!" and "those wheels better come down or else I'm going to be angry!" the whole time.

After 8 hours from Detroit, I took my first steps on German soil. And it was in the Frankfurt Airport, the hugest airport I have ever laid eyes on in my entire life. It took me 45 minutes to walk from my arrival gate to my departure gate for Berlin, and when I arrived I was red faced and panting like a dog. But, walking down the flat escalators that make you feel like a super speed walker, I was filled with the feeling that "gosh dark it, I am an independent woman. I'm flying on my own to another continent like a boss."

I had a brief minute of panic and desire to go home as I was boarding the flight from Frankfurt to Berlin. Its in times like these that God uses the little things for encouragement.

It was a foggy morning in Frankfurt, and I was blessed with a window seat on the flight to Berlin. I was beginning to think it didn't even matter that I had a window seat because everything looked like this.

And then this.

And then . . . 

Brilliance. Over that drab grayness was hidden brilliance. It was one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen.

And I knew that once I went to sleep, things would regain that original excitement.

Either way, I found Alicia at the airport and we shared a taxi, driven by a nice elderly German gentleman who spoke no English so I chatted with him in German a while.

Here's us in front of FU-BEST to prove that we made it safely.

And now we're here and I'm with my host family and I'm going to bed.

More on the actual Berlin later.

I didn't know lack of sleep could make you feel so dizzy.