First Post

Hello from the Amsterdam airport! I am unreasonably excited about this because, except for spending some time in Turkey at age two, this is my first time out of the country. I am sitting in a weird, square, orange chair in the "Kids Forest" area of the airport, which from my brief stint here I have determined is the coolest part. Here are some pictures:

The pictures didn't work, hopefully the wifi in my dorm will be better & I can upload them. Sorry for the false advertising.


For those who don't know, I will be spending about 6 weeks in Arusha, Tanzania, studying Human Rights and Capacity Building with Arcadia University. We will be in the classroom from 9-1 Monday through Friday, and will also be taking some trips to visit NGOs and Human Rights Groups. In addition, I get to go on a one day safari! It will be hard to beat the Disney World Jungle Cruise, but I think it may come close. There will also be other optional outings, all of which I plan on attending, including a visit to a Maasai village and a hike on Mt Kilimanjaro. I'm extremely out of shape, so the last one should be interesting. Hopefully I'll be doing a lot of walking and I'll come back lean and tan (haha).

Back to my airport experiences, this airport is really cool. The area I'm in is like a little IKEA with some very Scandinavian furnishings, and Rugrats playing in French somewhere. There is also a piano for people to play if they feel like it, which I think is nice. And there is an airport library with books about the Netherlands along with all kinds of other things. That's nice I think. Maybe it means that the people of the Netherlands are more trusting than the people of America. I want whoever designed this place to design my house. Minus the 747s and security checkpoints. The flight here was long but not too terrible. I watched a great movie called Runway Beat, a cutesy Japanese drama about a group of highschoolers working together against all odds to put on a fashion show for their school. Raw human drama, plus lots of plaid, edgy-ish clothing. I also listened to a podcast of This American Life called "American Limbo," which seems oddly appropriate considering my current mental and physical state. I left my sense of time somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, so I'm confused about what I should be feeling right now. But my grasp on time has always been pretty tenuous, so I'm hoping that will be in my favor in helping me transition to all of these new, exotic timezones.

Well, that's all for now--my next flight boards in about 2.5 hours, and then I'll meet the people from Arcadia and others from my group and get driven to Arusha, supposedly about 2 hours from the airport. Hopefully I'll be able to SLEEP on this next flight. Hakuna Matata! (the extent of my Swahili right now--it means no worries).