This trip has been quite a whirlwind of travel! From driving to Pittsburgh from Ohio on Friday evening, to flying to DC Saturday afternoon, and now writing this from the airport in Frankfurt, Germany while waiting for our flight to Cyprus, it feels like so much has happened in this period of less than forty-eight hours. As the semester ended with the stress of finals, I felt like I couldn’t get excited for the trip until the last few days as I needed time to decompress. While packing Thursday night (last minute, I know), I realized that I couldn’t wait to embark on this adventure. Friday night was a good time of getting to know the group, who seems to mesh really well, and relaxing for the stressful day of travel we would experience on Saturday. It was fun to see rivalries emerge between the business and engineering students, friendships form between the randomly assigned roommates, and memories come to life with the disposable film cameras we all bought and bedazzled together.

Saturday got off to a bit of a slow start as we all grabbed coffee and then had so much downtime before our bus left for the airport, but as the day went on, it was all but slow. Once we arrived, it was quite the experience! We had quite a bit of time in the Pittsburgh airport to get through security, grab food, pick which neck pillows we wanted, etc. After that, we were off to DC on the shortest flight I’ve ever been on by far, with them announcing the start of our descent just twenty-six minutes after we left. Once we landed, we rushed over to another terminal fearing that we wouldn’t have time to make our boarding as it was set to start just a half hour later, but then delays ensued and we took off a full hour after our scheduled time. Given how rushed we initially felt, it felt almost wrong to be annoyed by this delay as more time was exactly what we were hoping for. Our flight to Germany was interrupted by the most extreme turbulence I’ve ever experienced which lasted over thirty minutes and definitely did not allow for adequate sleep so that we could adjust to this time change, but we are all surviving and doing the best we can. Kinda crazy to think that we’re supposed to be ready for a full day of more travel and then settling into Cyprus while back home it’s just 4am. I can’t wait to see what the rest of this day and trip brings, so far it has definitely come with a bunch of surprises!

For both of today’s flights, we exited directly to the terminal. It’s crazy to see how large these planes are when you’re standing directly next to one!