Getting to Germany

We were woken up around 8 and we all ate breakfast. Around 1 we all boarded the buses to Dulles DC airport. As a group we checked in all our luggages at the United airlines desk, all 91 students going to Germany. As you can imagine, quite a lot of luggage. It took us about an hour to check all of our luggage in. Then we proceeded to security which took about another hour for all of us. We then had to take the airport tram to our gate. By the time we got to our gate it was 4:00 and the plane boarded at 4:38. I called my family and bought a frosty from Wendy's, my last purchase in America for a while.

I sat next to Claire on my left and Kati on my right across the aisle. We talked a lot and I spent most of the ride awake and only slept an hour. When we arrived in Frankfurt I was freaking out and totally excited. We arrived in Germany at 7:20am so basically we all had to stay awake for a day with no sleep. All the AFS students were brought into the same room where we waited as more AFS students from all over the world arrived. There were Bolivians, Danes, Brzilians, Italians, Ecuadorians, Vietnamese, Belgians and most excitingly, Japanese people! I was so happy to get to speak Japanese. I even got to interpet between the Americans and the Japanese. Most of the exchange students didn't know English or very much German. I look forward to the time at the end of the year when we meet again all can speak German and communicate with each other. Once all the exchange students arrived we were divided into groups and put on trains with the other students heading in our general area. We left around 3. I was on the train bound for Bremen and there were about 10 other AFS students. Once we arrived at Osnabrück 3 of us disembarked. An Italian girl, an American girl from Connecticut and myself. I didn't know how I was getting picked up. It was dark. I was in across the world in a city where I knew nobody. I'm surprised I wasn't scared but I suppose I was so jetlagged that I wasn't. My host family met me on the platform and it wasn't so awkward. We walked out to the car outside the train station and drove to my new home. My host family showed me around the house. I unpacked my things and passed out. I woke up the next day around 10. My host mom told me I slept 11 hours. I guess I needed it. I was still titred the next day.