Fit Like? (How are you? I'm learning already)
Yes, I have made it safe and sound to Aberdeen with very tired but in one whole Hannah-shaped piece. It's Monday afternoon for me now* and I got into Aberdeen yesterday morning at around 8:30. The time difference was quite a shock to my system especially since I didn't sleep on the plane...but let me start from the beginning.
I got on the plane in Detroit at 4pm on Saturday after making it through the various lines, scanning machinery, and hoops for jumping through that dot the airport. I found myself in the company of some of my fellow K students as we waited to depart from Detroit. Once on the plane it was a fairly smooth ride, although I always forget how much I hate taking off. I didn't sleep at all, but watched a couple of movies and ate airplane food (yum?)
We landed in Amsterdam just before 6am. Amsterdam was really cool looking from the air at night, tons of lights. We wandered off the plane and went to find where our connection was and on the way we ran into a couple of other K students who had also just arrived. We were all rather slap-happy from the traveling, the time difference, and the fact that we were on our way to Scotland, finally! It was definitely a bit disorienting, and the fact that almost all of the airport announcements were in Dutch didn't help matters.
We made it through another passport check and security line and then got on a bus that drove us to the cityhopper plane from Amsterdam to Aberdeen. That flight was pretty turbulent (*shudder*). My poor ears were not happy with all the pressure changes.
My first sight of Aberdeen was green fields and sheep - lots and lots of sheep. We came really close to a field of them when the plane was landing, and they didn't seem to give a crap. They just stood in their field, eatin' their grass. So the sheep are very chill here.
We got off the plane to a grey and drizzling morning (welcome to Scotland). We all made it across the UK border (I have a pretty new stamp on my visa inside my passport!) and collected our luggage. Then right when we walked out into the main lobby we were met by a very enthusiastic and nice group of Aberdeen students in bright yellow T-shirts who were running the shuttles from the airport to the uni campus and the flats. So we ran through the rain (which had gotten significantly heavier while we were waiting in the airport), and were whisked away by two very enthusiastic students in a big van that was blasting music. I think they wanted to keep us from falling asleep.
Once we made it to Hillhead halls, which is a large group of flats that serve as housing for students studying at the Uni, we picked up our keys and headed off our separate ways to find our new flats. I live in Hector Boece Court, which is one of the groups within the collection of flats in Hillhead, and apparently known as one of the shittiest (pardon my language). I will go into more detail and put up pics of my flat in another post.
After finding our rooms separately and putting our bags down a few of us managed to gather once again and go on a search for food of some sort. All this was made much more difficult by the fact that 1.) we had no phones and therefore no way of communicating with one another. 2.) we had no internet, again no way of communicating. 3.) the fact that we were all uber tired. 4.) the fact that we had no idea where we were and where we were going.
But we got directions to a grocery store that is down the hill from the flat complex, the Lidl and managed to make our way there. By chance there was a restaurant next door which we wandered into. We had a zombie-like lunch at the end of which we tried to figure out the proper way to 1.) pay the bill and 2.) tip. We finally asked the bartender, and he very nicely gave us a little bit of an idea how to do both those things. We probably looked like we hadn't enjoyed our lunch at all, we literally all looked a little sick.
On our way back we picked up a few groceries at the Lidl, just what we could carry since the Lidl is similar it the Aldi in the U.S. where you have to pay for bags. When we got back we split up again and went to take naps or unpack.
For my part I was determined to stay up until the evening so that I could start adjusting to the time difference. So I set about unpacking. There a few times in the middle of folding a shirt or some other more relaxed activity that I started to nod off while sitting up. It was a little sad.
I hadn't been planning on going anywhere else, but in the evening we all met up again and ended up walking to downtown Aberdeen, which is about a 40 minute walk from Hillhead. We had dinner at the Abercrombie Bar - consisting for me of fish and chips and a pint of Tennent's, a Scottish beer - a fairly good ending to our first (very long) day in Scotland.
*I started this post on Monday, but wasn't able to finish it until Thursday.
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