*Warning - Lots of reading ahead
April 27, 2011 – 8:45 am
Today marks the beginning of a very big adventure! I am currently on a plane on my way to Toronto, Canada. My final destination – Munich, Germany!
For May Term, I am taking a class in Salzburg, Austria. The class is titled “German Expressionist Films”, so we will be watching old, silent, German films. I’m definitely on this trip for the travel experience, though! We will have Thursday evenings through Sundays free to travel. I already have a couple weekend trips planned with some of my friends, so I am really excited for those!
Several other friends from my class and I decided to fly out a few days early into Munich so we can get a little bit of traveling done before the class even starts. I am flying over with my friend Keenan, a fellow computer science senior. Once we arrive in Munich, we will first be meeting up with a girl who is in the other Salzburg class, Yurie. I have never met her before, but we are now Facebook friends so that we can recognize each other at the airport. She arrives 15 minutes before Keenan and me. We will then wait at the airport another 3 hours so that we can also meet up with our other two friends from the class, Caitlin and Katie. Once we are all together, we will take a train to where our hostel is located and begin our adventure!
Keenan’s dad was kind enough to offer to drive us to LAX this morning. Since Keenan lives in Temecula, my roomie Nicolette had the brilliant idea of me spending the night at her house in Murrieta so that they could pick me up from there instead of Fallbrook, which would have been out of the way. So that’s what I did!
My day started very early, as you can image for a morning international flight. Keenan said that he would pick me up at 4 am, so my alarm woke me up at 3:20 am. Almost seconds later, I get a text from Keenan telling me that he was on his way! I was very surprised with how early they were coming over so I quickly got dressed, brushed my teeth and hair, and double checked I wasn’t forgetting anything. Nicolette was so kind to wake up at that insanely early hour to say goodbye to me. Keenan and his parents arrived a little after 3:30, my bags were thrown in the car, I said farewell to Nicolette, and we were off…
It was definitely nice getting an early start because we did not get any of the horrid LA traffic. I think we got to LAX around 4:45 am, and Keenan’s parents parked the car so that they could come in with us. That was nice of them to make sure we got checked in ok. Keenan and I checked in with Air Canada, and a woman working there helped us get our boarding pass and change our seats for the second flight. There were no two seats next to each other on the first flight, so the plan was to just ask someone if they would mind switching seats. For the second flight, there were two seats next to each other, but the woman helping us was trying to tell us to pick seats in separate rows. It was kind of difficult understanding why she wanted us to do that, but I guess she was trying to tell us that we could then switch with someone and end up having an extra seat between us to lie down or stretch out. Keenan and I decided to just pick the two seats next to each other, however, so that we won’t have to deal with switching seats with someone.
We got our boarding passes, checked our luggage, got through security, and made it to Gate 27. There were barely any people there. We were both hungry and Keenan informed me that we wouldn’t be served any meals on this flight, so we decided to grab some breakfast at 6 am. There were very few choices, and of course everything was so EXPENSIVE! We both ended up getting a meal from Burger King that cost $8 each…you should have seen how small this breakfast sandwich was. It was definitely a rip-off, but we really didn’t have much of a choice.
After breakfast, we just waited at the gate until it was time to board, which started around 7:25. Keenan had seat 20A and I had seat 19F. Luckily, the man who was supposed to sit next to Keenan agreed to switch seats with me, so that worked out smoothly. The touch screen on my tv in front of me isn’t working properly, but it’s not a big deal. Will is letting me borrow his netbook (those really small laptops), and he put on a season of the show “3rd Rock from the Sun”. I vaguely remember watching some of that show when it was aired back in the 90’s, but it’s definitely more enjoyable to watch now that I’m older. So, I will entertain myself with that show as well as the book I brought.
We land in Toronto at 3:37 pm (12:37 CA time), and then we have quite a bit of a layover until our next flight. I believe we leave Toronto at 8 pm. I hope they have free Wi-Fi at that airport! If not, at least there is always tv shows and books to read. Our second flight will take us into Munich, and we arrive at 10:05 am local time (Thursday morning, of course). Hopefully I can get some sleep on the second plane to start adjusting myself to the time change.
Canada, here we come!
The adventure begins!
5:40 pm (Toronto time)
We made it to Toronto! It was a fairly smooth flight until the last hour. Then we had a bit of turbulence because of the weather over here, but we survived.
Going through customs was easy, and the next step was getting some food. Apparently I am very ignorant when it comes to foreign matters, because I was unaware that Canada had its own currency (ok, get your laughs out now). I didn’t want to use my credit or debit card to pay for my food, because I did not tell my banks about using it in Canada. I didn’t want them to freeze my accounts, so I used US dollars. I should have used my $10 but instead grabbed my $20. She gave me the change in Canadian money, so I ended up with a lot more Canadian currency than I needed. Oops. To get “rid” of some of that money, I decided to buy a cute little Toronto keychain.
We still have about 2 more hours until our next flight leaves. Thank goodness there is free Wi-Fi here!!
At the Toronto airport.
My crispy chicken sandwich and the Canadian money I didn't really want. ;)
