Officially a foreigner!

After 20 hours I have finally landed and arrived at my dorm in Copenhagen. Definitely not the most comfortable plane ride, especially going from LA to Amsterdam, but it definitely could’ve been worse. It was great because on the flight from LA to Amsterdam (I stayed with my sister in LA for the night then caught my flight since it was cheaper to do it that way) the middle seat between me and my neighbor was empty so we had a mutual understanding that we would just share that space. I usually sleep a lot on flights and don’t recline the chair since I think it’s kinda rude to the person in back to recline (I personally don’t like it when people recline their chair if they sit in front of me so I wouldn’t want to do that to someone else) so that does kinda mess with my neck. But honestly, if that’s the only thing I have to complain about the flight then I think it went pretty well. The meals were pretty good too. I know some people don’t really like airplane food but I actually really enjoy it. I think having a small pick me up really helps. Also my taste buds are just pretty basic so I just appreciate anything I can get. But I think especially on such a long flight, having something warm to eat was amazing. It’s really nerdy but I have a lot of videos saved to my camera roll that I always intend to watch on flights or long car/bus rides, but I didn’t even last an hour into the flight until I knocked out. I did wake up intermittently but it worked out great because when I arrived in Amsterdam it was already morning.

Landing in Amsterdam was a great relief because I could stretch my legs, but I didn’t expect the layover to feel so long. It was only two hours but I think after being on a flight for so long, I really just wanted to put all of my stuff down and take a rest in a secure place (I’ve never trusted napping in public, especially with sensitive documents like my passport). I think my biggest disappointment with my layover was not getting a stamp on my passport. I thought it would be really cool to collect stamps from all of the countries I visited in Europe but I don’t think that will happen now. I tried asking the security person if they had any stamps but he shook his head. I would assume that it’s the same with all of the EU countries which really sucks since I could’ve had a ridiculous amount of stamps by the time exchange is over (we’ll see lol). Also, I forgot to mention this but this is going to be an extremely stream of thought blog. I’ll try to edit this for spelling but for the most part this will just be my brain saying things and my fingers typing it down, so I apologize in advance for anything that’s difficult to read. But anyway, for people planning flights, especially from Hawaii to Copenhagen, I HIGHLY recommend not getting huge layovers. Initially I was going to have I think an eight hour layover and I WOULD NOT have made it through if that were the case. I was dying after two hours in Schipol (the airport I was at) so I can only imagine how an eight hour layover would’ve been.

But after about two or three hours I was finally on my way to Copenhagen. It was a bit of a relief, not only to be able to not be on a plane, but also to get out of the gloomy Amsterdam weather. It was really rough. I’ve never seen fog, but I assume what I saw in Amsterdam was fog. It was cool at first but it got old pretty quickly. Oh yeah I forgot to mention, it was really helpful because when I landed, I was worried that my bags would’ve gotten lost in transit but fortunately, when I asked the Delta helpdesk, they assured me that my luggage would be transferred directly to the flight that I was on so I wouldn’t have to worry about picking up and lugging my big suitcases all the way to bag check and drop. I had two hours at the airport but I’m glad it wasn’t spent running around with two suitcases trying to check in. But continuing on, I finally landed in Copenhagen. It wasn’t as cold as I thought it would be, or I guess I wasn’t as cold as I thought I would be. I walked out of the airport with a long sleeve, long underwear, and a hoodie and I was fine. I had long underwear and long pants on the outside but I was surprised that I wasn’t colder, especially because the coldest I’ve ever been in was maybe 40 degrees. That’s one thing that should be interesting: learning Celsius and the metric system. I really wished I had practiced beforehand so I could just rattle off the numbers but I’ll just have to learn by doing I guess.

I’m just happy that I’m finally in my room and I get to decompress. The room came with a bunch of stuff and they even gave us sheets so that’s a huge plus. I’m actually just gonna go dress my bed now and go take a nap. It’s really weird, even though I’ve slept on each flight I’ve taken, I’m still really tired. Makes no sense but I’m kinda falling asleep right now so I guess that’s it for now.

(My first grocery store run to make sure I don't starve. I have no idea what anything means so I just grabbed what looked good. There's eggs, cheese, bread, some garlic butter, and some sausage.)