11/27 - 11/28 - The flight, and day 1 in Germany!

Well, we made it :-) After working Monday night, I went to my parents' house and slept for about an hour before we had to get up and head to the airport. There was *no* line at all for ticketing or security. It was nice. The flight to Atlanta wasn't bad at all. I used my mom for a pillow, and slept the entire way. In Atlanta we rode one of those carts to our next gate (thankfully, not sure my mom woulda made that trek otherwise!). We grabbed lunch at Panda Express, and the layover was over before I knew it. I do have to mention...the Atlanta airport had these odd vegetables all over. I didn't notice them anywhere else...but the gate across from where we were had this random giant carrot with a lima bean rotating on top of it. Just...odd. There was also an ear of corn shaped like an airplane. Yeah...we couldn't figure them out *laugh* but it gave us something to laugh at while we were waiting.
We were very lucky for the flight from Atlanta to Dusseldorf. It was empty enough that we were each able to have our own set of seats. Spreading out over 2 seats makes a HUGE difference when you're flying for 9 hours. They gave us these little kits with blindfolds, headphones, earplugs, a toothbrush & toothpaste, lotion, and a few other things. They also fed us tons of food (well...tons for me...lol). I slept lots, and tried to watch the movies ("Mr. Bean's Holiday" isn't my kind of movie...then "License to Wed" was on and I was so tired I couldn't stay awake). So overall, not bad. The sunset even looked WAY cool when I woke up in the middle of the flight. I tried to take a picture of it, but the picture couldn't capture how cool it was.We made it to the Dusseldorf airport about an hour early, and hung out waiting for Tammie to pick us up.

Tammie showed up with Emma, and we headed back to their house. We did have our first experience on the autoban. Ok, I have anxiety bad enough when other people drive...but going 90 on the curves? I had to not watch. My mom kept telling Tammie to slow down. It was pretty funny. We got back to their house just in time to say hi to Spencer and Shantal just before they had to leave for school. We sat up and talked for a bit, then my mom went downstairs to sleep. I tried to stay awake, then slept on the couch for 4 hours apparently. It didn't feel like that to me, but then again...it never does! I still had a pretty bad headache when I woke up, and I fought sleep the rest of the night. Tammie and I ran to the grocery store to get more bread, and she wanted to show me the grocery store experience. Wow! If you don't watch it, you'll get left behind. They check out the items, and you have to bag them as fast as they check them out. You also have to deposit a euro to use the shopping cart. Then, when you lock the cart back in, you get your euro back. We had dinner, then I went upstairs with Gardner to try to figure out the wireless internet (they didn't know their security key...then when we figured it out...it still wouldn't work because Vista hates wpa-psk security, apparently.)

I then just completely crashed. I was SO tired. I tossed and turned a bit, but was up for the day by about 7 in the morning. That is SO not like me. Here are some of the pictures from the flight/airport & my first day :-)