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What Little I Remember From the Flight
As most of you probably know, I have quite the petrifying fear of flying so just getting over here was an adventure in and of itself (I'm so glad I had Taliah to tell me where to go, otherwise who knows if I'd have even found my way out of Chicago's Airport). The most stressful moment as it turned out was just sitting and waiting for that first flight, after that everything got a lot easier (until Sweden, but I'll get into that later).
The most difficult part (mentally) with every flight was getting onto the plane itself. Once I was inside of the plane I was able to trick myself into thinking it was just an oversized bus and that the turbulence were just crappy Canadian roads and rumble strips. Although I actually found myself oddly fascinated with the flight process, which is kind of what lead to my fear in the first place as I used to be addicted to a show called Mayday (which is a documentary style program in which they look at a plane crash and try and figure out why it crashed and what went wrong... perhaps not the best show to make a habit of watching). But back on track, I was constantly attempting to get glimpses out the window looking at the clouds beneath me as opposed to above me like they usually are. The international flight even had the option to see the view from the planes external camera's, which I watched both the take off and landing process on. Very Interesting.
When I wasn't on a flight it was also interesting to see the differences in how countries dealt with customs. In Canada everyone was very friendly and jovial, clearly most of them were having a good time and just treating this like a normal everyday job (cracking jokes to fellow employees, trying to get me through as hassle-free as possible and in general being relatively friendly). In the states however everyone was very mechanical and not the most friendly of folks and clearly took this as more than just a mere job. Sweden was by far the easiest. Everything and everyone was so relaxed, at least until we got to the passport check. Here we found out that we should have gotten a visa before we ever left Canada, so hopefully there's some paperwork awaiting us at Mennorode to allow us to stick around longer than the 3 months allotted for travel.
Once we finally arrived we spent a solid hour trying to figure out who was picking us up and where (and they apparently were trying to figure out the same thing). Every now and then we'd go looking for the other volunteer named Dustin (as I had some idea what he looked like) but unfortunately Dustin would go looking for us for the same reasons right around the same time, so we were continually missing each other and in general getting nowhere in our search. Once we finally found each other we realized that they were only one gate over the whole time (and that was only after we got fed up of looking and called Mennorode to see what the plan was supposed to be). But now I am here and well and looking forward to what the rest of this year holds for me.
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