The Adventure Begins

Yesterday was possibly the longest day of my life. For me, "yesterday" started at 9:30 am Central time on Thursday, January 19. It was "the big" day, the day that I flew off to the mythical land called "The Netherlands." At about noon, I went to the airport where I met Dustin, Juliet, and Emily, and me flew out at 1:30 pm CST. We arrived at Chicago for a short stop, picked up some Starbucks coffee, and were back on the plane to Frankfurt, Germany. Thankfully, I had an aisle seat, and there was nobody sitting next to me, so I was reasonably comfortable the entire flight. Around midnight CST, instead of going to sleep for the night, I reset my watch to be 7:00 am, so the night went really fast (or, there was no night at all)! After that, we arrived in Frankfurt, had to go through customs (but not with our suitcases), jumped to Amsterdam, oddly didn't have to go through customs in Amsterdam, was met by a bunch of people from the college, and then took an hour-and-a-half train ride to Zwolle.

Some of my host family met us in Zwolle and took us to their home it Hattem. I was home, at least for the next four months. The rest of the day was spent relaxing with the Vissers (my host family). I really like them, they seem to be really fun. Dustin and I can communicate with them pretty well, especially if they are in one group (so if one person doesn't know how to say something, they ask each other). It's kinda funny listening to them talk in Dutch, they just go off and I am clueless to what they are talking about. They'll be excitedly telling stories and laughing hysterically, and then take a short break to translate so we at least have some idea what is going on.

We had Klompen, I think that's what they called it, and Meatballs for dinner. It was really good; Klompen is mashed potatoes, with a bunch of other vegetables mashed in as well. After dinner, Elize, Lineke, Hans (Lineke's boyfriend), and Myranda took Dustin and I to "the center." The center is just the center of Hattem, as far as I could tell, but they have a really cool wall from the middle ages still standing, and they have a bunch of shops along one road.

Eventually I went to bed at 11:00 on Friday night, which is 4:00 pm Central time, meaning that my day lasted 31 hours with only a two hour nap. But I'm awake and having a great time!