Well, Here Goes Nothing
I know what you're thinking.
"A study abroad blog? What a fresh and innovative idea! Never been done before! Please post this everywhere the eye can see!"
Thanks in advance for that kind and accurate message, friend!
People have given me a lot of advice about going abroad. "Go into it with zero expectations," "Expect to be dazzled and amazed," "Don't travel, it's better to experience one place than be a tourist in many," "Travel everywhere you possibly can," "Take chances," "Be safe," "Do not make a travel blog," "Seriously, I will not read your travel blog."
So, I did what any 20-year-old traveler would do and ignored virtually everything anyone told me. My travel preparations involved treating anything that made me nervous like a joke and Google image searching "The Hague" every day.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Traveling here involved two plane rides, a lift from a kind airport man in a golf cart, a train ride, a trek from the train station, a trek to the housing office accompanied by a guide and finally a bus ride to my apartment. In all, this took about a day.
For someone who regularly misses her stop on the DC metro and gets turned around in any given Walmart, the odds of me surviving this journey were very slim. If it weren't for the help of many many Dutch folks who spoke better english than I do, the clarity and general ease of European transportation, reassurance from every flight attendant I encountered, and pre-departure coaching from my parents, I probably wouldn't be sitting in the center of Den Haag today.
Speaking of my parents, here is a picture of them shortly before I left them at the airport. I think they were arguing over something sticky on the table but I can't be sure.
The plane I rode was named after a volcano, I don't know if they named it as such to make me feel safer, or to make me hyper-aware of the might and power of the machine that would be controlling my movement at its whim. Anyway, I took a picture.
The only thing Iceland Air gifted me was a bottle of "Icelandic Glacial Water." I expected this water to heal every part of my being and change my life forever. It tasted like straight up Dasani.
The journey after that is kind of a blur mostly because I was very tired and very nervous the entire time. I refused to sleep on either plane ride because I was worried that something would happen. I stayed awake. Nothing happened. I just got tired. Go figure.
By the time I arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, after a brief layover in Iceland, I was the exhausted shell of a person. My internal clock thought it was 5 a.m., the time on the wall of the airport terminal read 12:40 p.m. I ate a falafel salad for "breakfast" because "falafel" was one of the few words on the menu that I understood.
I boarded a train to The Hague and soon enough I was standing at Den Haag Holland Spoor station, tired, sweaty, confused, overwhelmed and excited, somehow, I had made it.
On my ride up the elevator to my new room I leaned against the wall, my 3 bags strewn in front of me. I reached my floor and a guy entered and asked if I was moving in. I muttered a "yup." He told me he was moving out, he had been in the Netherlands for a year and was finally going home to see his family in Kenya. I got out and we both waved goodbye. One of us moving far from home, the other moving back.
