Our first day!

Which, in a way, felt like a million. It has been a grueling trip since our 7:30 breakfast in the hotel in Minneapolis to where I'm now sitting in my bunkbed in Umea, but every moment of this long adventure into the winter wonderland of Sweden was worth it.

Like I said earlier, we were up and to the airport fairly early where we checked in with little hassle and found our gate. After sitting around and enjoying the last bit of American soil (and cellphone service), I saw that I was not the only one last-minute reading the books we were assigned to read before our landing in Sweden. Oh, homework. *sigh*

Getting from Minneapolis to Chicago was easy (hooray!) but it was a bit of "de ja vu" for Cassandra, who had just taken off from O'Hare only a few days before and a shock to Jenn, who cleverly stated that the airport security was not like that of MN with the comment, "You know you're not in MN anymore. The security is sassy!"

From Chicago to Stockholm was, well.....LONG. It was an 8 hour (approx.) flight and was filled with ups and downs, in-flight movies, funny moments with the flight attendants, and a lot, A LOT, of stretching. The food was delicious though! Much better than my first run-in with airline meals...we'll not get into that though... After flying over Canada and Greenland, waving to the UK, and sailing over Norway, we landed safe and sound in Stockholm. Thus began the adventure!

Personally, I'm fascinated by international airports; they are so cool! Languages flicked this way and that, the crazy baggage trains and catching the trams, the escalators and the people. Thrilling. Well, Stockholm perfectly embodied this love for me, and, thankfully, was easy to navigate...since I pretty much am going to bed tonight with three words in Swedish rolling about my overwhelmed and tired head: "Hello," "Thank you," and "Good bye."

After sitting for a brief time in Stockholm, we got on a cute little plane that would take us north, north, north to Umea! And when we got off, and set our feet on Swedish land for the time (well, for most of us the first time) we were greeted by a brisk -25 C day and had to walk into the terminal in this little town that can be only described with the word "quaint."

So there you have it: our flight in a nutshell. It seems short, but there is a good reason for this: I'm dead tired. I invited everyone else to fill in blanks and tell Ben's "My grandfather was from Sweden" story, since it's just that funny. But for now, hej da! :)