Day Fourteen: Back in the Air with Time to Reflect

It's another day of travel for all of the Americans (or the 17 of us who didn't stay in Europe). The 9 hour plane ride was a lot more tolerable, now that we all knew each other. I sat in the middle seat in the middle row; nice and cozy. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Will (yet again) and Lindsey. There was a baby across the aisle that I spent a good hour straight making faces at and laughing with. Her parents caught on, and when she started being fussy, they would turn her toward me and I'd occupy her for a while. It became a weird unspoken system. I felt like I actually knew what I was doing while making our way through security and stuff, but maybe I'm just good at lying to myself. The same way that I felt like the 9 hour flight "flew" by. Lol. But seriously, I think I enjoyed myself a little too much on the flight.

The last picture in Germany

Cutest baby ever

We landed in Washington, DC, and the flight going to Pittsburgh left about 2 hours after landing. I figured we'd have some time to blow, but the DC airport was crazy unorganized. We followed the transferring flight signs and it gathered everyone into this little area at the bottom of staircases and escalators. It got so crowded that there was literally no more room for anyone to come down the stairs, so as a group, if we saw someone coming, we'd have to yell to them to take the stairs, not the escalator, which was dropping off into the already over crowded pool of people.  It was so frustrating to watch the slowest, most inefficient process ever and not be able to do anything about it. Mark made some comment to me about how my inner industrial engineer must be crying, and I realized that it was bothering me more than most people. So while I hated everything happening, I definitely feel good about picking industrial engineering.

After waiting forever to get back into the airport, some of the Pittsburgh people gathered around our terminal's outlet, sitting on the ground too. There were 7 students going back on this flight, plus Dr. Feick. We boarded the cutest little plane ever! I counted 22 windows on the side, so like, 23 or 24 rows total. I sat next to none other but Will (that poor boy had to sit next to me for all 4 flights), and I had the window seat again! The flight was supposed to be an hour (according to our tickets) but about 3 minutes after we took off our seat belts, they announced to put them back on for landing. I think the ride total was 30ish minutes, and Will and I just chatted the whole time. I was kind of glad it was so short because there was a baby on this one who was not nearly as pleasant as the baby on the other flight. She screamed the entire time, and there was no way for me to see her, which made it worse... So thank goodness for the short ride!

We landed, I called my dad, we made our way through the airport to the baggage claim, and I met my dad outside. But I couldn't leave without hugs to all my friends (at least those left) and of course Dr. Feick.



AND now I guess it's time to reflect.

I've been trying to tie in reflections and opinions throughout every post in this blog, but there's one thing I couldn't find an appropriate place to fit. I thought I would experience more culture shock than I actually did, but I realized it's because I was exposed to college students, like me, speaking English, like me, and doing the same tasks as me. It didn't feel incredibly different to home. However, the main difference I noticed between cultures is that it seems like America keeps people younger for longer. While learning about Germany and their culture, it seemed to me that they push children into adulthood as soon as they can. They pick a school path at the age of 10; they already have to decide their interests (basically deciding what they're going to do with their lives in 5th grade). Because of this, they have more time for life experiences. Most of the kids we worked with have studied, volunteered or lived abroad and plan to travel a lot more. They, in general, are just more experienced than us, even at my age. Conversely, in America, we are just thrown into adulthood as soon as we leave for college, but still with limited freedom. We are expected to live like adults, but not treated like one. Germans have all of their teenage years to learn how to be adults, but we have college, which isn't even entirely adulthood. Ok rant over.

I can't even put into words how grateful I am for such an amazing opportunity. I also cannot describe how amazing this trip was; this blog does it little justice. Which leads to me to probably the only thing I wish was different. Even though we had the formal goodbye dinner on Thursday night, I think it would've been nice to have some sort of a goodbye with the Americans in the airport. It didn't dawn on me that the trip was ending until we were sitting at the Pittsburgh terminal with the 8 of us left, after we had lost more than half the group. There was no way for me to vocalize how great this trip was and how thankful I am to everyone who was there, even the ones who I didn't necessarily become very close with. But regardless, I think I can do the same thing here (if you're reading this, and you went on the trip with me, I'm sending you a virtual hug). Thank you to everyone I met and all the people who worked so hard to make this trip possible. I couldn't imagine it any other way and I'm so honored to say this was my first abroad opportunity.

Hope you had fun reading my blog (I'm sorry for any moments that made you judge my sanity)!!!

Veronica's Struggle of the Day:
This might be Lindsey's struggle... But anytime I had to use the restroom on the plane, I would just climb over her. I felt bad asking her to get up and at this point, we had just spent 2 weeks straight together, so I figured it was easier. Eh, this is a lame struggle of the day, but maybe that's a good thing.