I woke up on Saturday in California at 8:30 AM. It is now 11 AM on Sunday in California. Save a few hours of sleep on the plane, I have already been up for 24 hours. It started pretty well. My parents came to pick me up from school and my roommates saw me off. We got to LAX with plenty of time to spare, about an hour-and-a-half before my flight was scheduled to leave. I got through all of the checkpoints without any hiccups, and when I got to my terminal (which of course was at the end of a very long hall, and I was carrying two not-light backpacks), there was almost no one there. So I sat down and started reading The Lord of the Rings (of course!). Shortly after that two people who appeared to be my age walked by me to sit down in the same terminal. One of them was carrying an instrument. I was almost certain that I was the only one on my flight from the group of people studying here this semester, so I immediately looked for the email that had everyone's flight itineraries. I quickly found that there were three other people whose flights departed for Frankfurt from LAX at the same time as mine, so I started to wonder if perhaps I wasn't so alone after all. Eventually I finally walked up to them and asked them if they were heading to Heidelberg with the Biola program, and they were! They are Megan and Andrew from Westmont, and not long after that Chris from Biola showed up as well. We all four ended up being on the same flight, which was comforting because it meant we wouldn't each have to navigate Frankfurt alone when we arrived.
Unfortunately on the flight I didn't get much sleep, only about three hours total. When the flight departed, it was midnight German time, so I was determined to get some sleep so I could function when I arrived. It sort of worked. I noticed that I started to shake when I got on the plane, because by that point I hadn't eaten in 16 hours, and my body was starting to rebel. By the time I finally ate breakfast on German time, I had't eaten a meal in almost 30 hours, so I pretty much scarfed down breakfast. It was actually pretty good, so I was happy about that. Fasting for 24+ hours before/during travel and then eating at breakfast time is supposed to force the body to more quickly adjust to the new local time. My dad said it worked for him pretty well when he traveled to Uganda last summer, and it seemed to work pretty well for me today. I was tired, but not so tired that I felt I was going to fall over asleep at any moment. I will truly find out in the morning.
The drive from Frankfurt to Heidelberg is about an hour long. It was a beautiful drive. The area was covered with snow today, so it looked like, in the words of Nattie, a winter-wonderland. Heidelberg is a beautiful city. It is a modern city that still preserves it's history, and we are actually living in Alt Heidelberg. Our pension is about a 10 second walk from a small square, which has the city hall and Der Heilige Geist Kirche, which at one time was both a Catholic and Protestant church.
After our short tour of the city we had a chance to unpack and get settled into our rooms, and were on our own for the rest of the day. A few of us went out to get a bite to eat at 6ish, and ended up getting delicious crepes (made the right way) and then coffee/tea at a cafe. The tea I had was so delicious. I couldn't read what all was in it, so I took a picture of the description so I can figure it out,
This is a view of a portion of Alt Heidelberg with the castle ruins up above the city. It's so beautiful!
Tomorrow we have a quick class orientation and then a tour of the castle ruins! Hopefully tomorrow the internet connection will be favorable towards loading photos.
Grace and Peace!
Suzannah
Super awesome! I love the pictures already! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Marla!
ReplyDelete