Apex of Wanderlust: The Voyage and Arrival

So as you may already know, I arrived in Helsinki yesterday. I'm typing this at 4:90 am because I went to bed at 7:30 pm after not sleeping for nearly two days :D

This is what my bed looks like :

It's super comfy!

The Voyage

At around 10 am on the 14th, I left Apex to fly to New York for the orientation, where I stayed in a hotel over night.

When I arrived at the orientation I was really confused because I walked into a conference room half full with puffy-eyed teenagers. I later learned this was because many had arrived as early as 9 am, and we weren't to get our room-keys until 3pm (though we actually received them around 4 pm). And I mean, being between the ages of 16-18 meant it can only be expected that the majority of us waited until midnight to pack.

I vaguely remember the events that took place during the orientation. Just that I met an overwhelming number of super cool people and something about a guy named Matt who dances around the world -- The 14th feels like a long time ago, or a dream at the very least.

At the orientation there were 6 Americans Sweden-bound, 7 Finland-bound, 10 Norway, and Switzerland dominated with 17.

Around 1 pm (NY time, which if you don't know is the same as Apex time) the students going to Norway, Sweden, and Finland said Good-Bye to the Swiss kids (whose flight wouldn't leave NY until 9pm) and headed to the airport to fly Air-Berlin to - Berlin of course!

We were met by the line pictured above :D It was actually a lot longer then it appears, and when I met the lady at the front she made me do several scrambled dances to get the weight down on my carry-on

So of course I handled it by taking a selfie

My new friend humored me because she's super nice :D

When we finally got on the plane, a very kind dude switched places with my other new friend so that the three of us could practice Finnish together, which we of course did the entire flight, and didn't once watch a movie, or discuss our lives in English, or our dialects, or cute animals. No not once. :D

I think we were on that plane for 8 hours, but because of time difference, I believe it was technically 14, and it felt like it .

Berlin

When we finally stepped foot on European soil (/concrete, same difference) we were greeted by this friendly looking bus who felt his purpose in life was to get us better acquainted with our neighbors, or at least me, it was very jerky.

I took the time to turn around and take this picture just for you. You're welcome.

When I got inside I proceeded to take more selfies in front of German signs and magazines, because,

why not?

Also we had this line.

Finland-bound Americans (minus one whom has duel citizenship and got to skip our line, not that I was jealous or anything ;) )

I was surprised that the people gave us stamps at the front of the line, because that meant we could leave the airport, and wanting to be rebellious - of course we did.

The french fries were really yummy, but I was eating them at 9 am German time, so 2 am.

(we later learned that this act was in fact not rebellious because we had to journey quite some ways outside to our gate)

After this relatively short flight I took this picture of the Helsinki skyline, and it was love at second sight, and first sight, and still love :D

There was more trouble at the airport because the airline lost the luggage of two from our group. But I eventually met my host mom, and got to see my room where I am now!!