The trip out here

---

So the trip out here was quite interesting. To begin with we flew from Philadelphia to Newark on a prop plane. If you've never been on one of these, it's a small plane that supposedly holds 50 passengers but should only hold about ten. It's not a jet, but has propellers instead. This was the scariest plane ride ever. There were 32 passengers and the plane was about 85 degrees inside. After sweating while everybody boarded, we get out onto the runway and the pilot cuts the engines and informs us that we have to stay in the sauna of a plane for another half-hour because we are delayed due to high crosswinds. Even the stewardess groans when she hears this one. So we sit. And sweat. FINALLY we take off after the pilot warning us that it will be a bumpy ride. He wasn't kidding. The entire flight lasted 35 minutes and the entire time we were flying through clouds, which apparently means that the turbulence is so bad that we lose about 30 feet of altitude every 2 minutes or so. The plane dropped, shook, made scary noises, and generally acted as if it wanted to fall from the sky during the entire 81-mile flight. I hate planes to begin with so I was white-knuckled the entire time. I was one of the lucky ones though because two people had to use their sick bags. What saved me was that there were two pilots in the cabin who were hitching a ride and they never freaked out so it made me feel a little better. I really don't think I'll ever get on one of those again unless I'm going somewhere awesome, which Newark clearly is not.

After suffering through that wonderful journey, we finally arrive in Newark. By this time we are a bit behind schedule, but we still had 2 hours until our real flight began. The only thing good about Newark is the airport though, and there are plenty of things to do and people to watch. We finally boarded the flight and we are sitting on the runway and the steward gets on the PA. "Welcome to Continental flight blah blah blah with non-stop service to London." At this point, everybody on the plane starts to stand up and protest. I think his fellow attendant must have poked him because we then hear 'uh...well, I guess we're going to Amsterdam today, this is the party plane, if you don't wanna party then get off now!" After the first flight I was in no mood for drunk flight attendants. Luckily they were very nice and the ride was smooth but painfully long. Continental has an interactive touch screen on all of the seat backs that allows you to watch movies on demand, listen to entire CDs, play games, watch episodes of shows, and see flight maps and information. It is awesome. I watched an episode of NCIS and played some Sudoku between trying (and failing) to sleep. The flight information told us our altitude, speed, distance to destination, time at origin and destination, miles left to travel, miles traveled, estimated time of arrival, and showed GPS maps of our flight so far. Coolest. Thing. Ever. We ended up getting into Amsterdam around 6:30 am local time. By the time figured out customs, luggage storage, and train tickets, it was after 8am. Unfortunately, a call to our hotel informed us that we couldn't check in until 2pm. This was not good since we hadn't really slept and had nowhere to go. We decided to find the hotel anyways and they still wouldn't let us check in. We ended up finding a restaurant that was open---not an easy thing to do at 10am on a Sunday here---and eating some toasties, which are their versions of grilled cheese. Yum. We stayed there as long as we could and then ended up sitting by a canal and watching boats go by. These people will put anything that floats into the canals. We took turns falling asleep on the bench by the canal and finally got to check into Hotel Flipper (I can't make this up) at 2pm. The entire room is smaller than my bedroom at home and there are four beds and a very small shower. All of us passed out at 2, which is around 8am at home and slept until now, 7ish. Hopefully we can find something to do on a Sunday night here. We meet the rest of the people and the professor tomorrow morning at the airport and then head to 's Hertogenbosch where we will be staying. I'll keep ya posted on how it goes 😊 Oh yeah, we've already met most of our fellow students. Four of us flew together and we met another one at the Philly airport gate and traveled with him to Amsterdam. Once there we heard "We are" and soon found three more people 😊 Woohoo! Can't wait to get started having fun!

---

Comments

[Jeff]

Jealous
Sounds like you had an adventure getting over there! Haha I'm glad the extra pilots were able to calm your nerves and keep you from breaking the arm wrests with your death grip. Man, I think you should get one of those media things from the second plane for your car. I would play with it constantly on our excursions and it just sounds generally awesome. What did you think of the airport in Schiphol? I thought it was pretty cool when I saw it last year. That sucks to hear about the room, but it's only for one night so I think you'll be ok as long as no one snores to loud lol. I can't wait to hear about your permanent living arangements