flight and arrival!

Well, heres the story of my flight and arrival to Sweden!

My dad drove me to SeaTac and my flight took off at 6.45pm on January the 16th from Seattle, WA to Copenhagen, Denmark. Overall the flight was 4853 miles and it took 10+ hours because of a headwind. I was surprised that saying goodbye wasn’t really that difficult. I remember calling my mom and sister just before going through security and then saying bye to my dad. I called my aunt earlier that day to tell her I was leaving and I think that’s the only time I cried while saying goodbye. I called her around 4pm at her work and she told me that she was thinking about me all day and that she hopes I have a safe flight and to be good, have fun, among other things people say when they’re saying goodbye. I spent a lot of time with my aunt growing up and there’s really a soft spot in my heart for her.

So, about the flight: this was my first international flight since I came to the US from Korea when I was four, so this was super exciting! I flew with SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) through Canada, over Greenland and Iceland, into Copenhagen. I’ve always wanted to fly with SAS because I’ve seen some funny commercials they have on YouTube. It was really a pretty awesome flight because SAS has in flight entertainment including music, movies, games, and a flight map. The flight map had things like: ground speed, time from departure point, time at destination, air temperature, and more. I really like watching statistics like that update, so it was a lot of fun. I watched part of a movie in Danish and listened to mostly the Scandinavian music channel while I fell asleep. SAS provided two meals and they were both pretty awesome. Dinner was pasta with meatballs, dinner roll, salad, apple cheesecake, and coffee. Breakfast was yogurt, orange juice, cheese, and a roll. I was feeling kinda sick or… well, not sick… but not hungry, so I was only able to drink the juice and have a few bites of yogurt.

Getting off the plane to go into Copenhagen was really cool because things were all written in Danish. I gotta say, the pilot on my flight was Danish too, so it was really hard to understand what he was saying. I followed some signs up/down a few escalators and found a bathroom before finding my connecting flight to Gothenburg since I hadn’t been to the bathroom in 10+ hours. The bathrooms really are wash closets over here; each toilet has its own sink and a full door. Anyways, after that I followed some more signs (while being amazed at awesome stores and being surrounded by languages other than English) to my gate for the flight to Gothenburg. I waited for about an hour and then boarded the plane. It was pretty awesome. By now, I had said ‘tack’, ‘nej, tack’ at least 15 times. I noticed the first few times I said even those words that I sounded so American. It was interesting to see which flight attendants would talk to me in Swedish versus those that spoke to me in English.

Once I boarded my connecting flight from Copenhagen to Gothenburg, I sat and buckled up like usual and we left pretty much on time. A few minutes after take-off, there was a loud bang noise that came from very close to where I was sitting on the right side of the plane. It got really quiet and then someone said something like: ‘Den låter inte så bra,’ which means “that doesn’t sound very good.” The a flight attendant rushed to the front of the plane and soon after, the captain turned on the PA and told us that there is a problem with one of our engines and that we need to go back to Copenhagen and switch planes. Turns out the motor wasn’t throttling and we weren’t getting any power out of it. We were all sort of freaked out, but we had a normal landing and were bussed to a new plane within the hour. It was funny hearing people calling their friends and family on their phones and telling them things like ‘en av våra motor exploderade,’ which means “one of our motors exploded.” This made me over an hour late for pickup by student guides from Gothenburg University, but luckily they were still there waiting. I made it on the last bus shuttle to the University. There were three student guides there to meet us: Astrid from Sweden (Studies Spanish), Florien from France, and Anton from Germany. There was about 20 of us on the bus ride to GU and three of us live on Helmutsrogatan. The guy’s name was Roland from Amsterdam and I forget the girl’s name, but she was from France. There was another girl I met that was on my flight. Her name was Elin and she was from Chicago. We then took a bus to pick up keys, then I was dropped off at my living quarters on Helmutsrogatan.

I live in room 015 of building number 15 and it is so great! I have my own fridge, kitchen, bathroom, and everything else I might need. It is way better than I could have ever expected! So, after I got unpacked a little bit, I went to the welcome party, which was at Café Olof. It’s a good thing I went to this welcome party. It was so loud and crowded, I really had to talk loudly. That’s something I’m not very good at doing, but I met a lot of people there and practiced my Swedish too! I ended up mostly hanging out with this group of exchange students from Finland. I also met this Norwegian guy there named Stein who ended up giving me a cd of Norwegian music before leaving that night. Another guy I met there… his name was Rasmus and he and I talked for a while. He is studying language philosophy and economics, so we talked a bit about language, linguistics, and the Ways of Meaning class I took last quarter. At around 1am I decided it was time to make my way back to my place, so I left and managed to somehow find my building.

I then proceeded to unpack stuff and by 2am I was eating a bowl of ramen noodles I had packed in my luggage. It was so delicious. I hadn’t eaten much that day.