To start off the trip, I got to take two extra days off of school, say goodbye to all of my friends and head to the airport with my mom and all of our luggage. We boarded our flight in Indianapolis and headed to Atlanta. With a three hour layover in Atlanta, we got something to eat and I tried to learn everyone in my new, extended family's name. I was pretty nervous about my first flight over an ocean, my first trip to Europe and meeting this family I had only heard about in stories.
The flight lasted for nine hours. Somehow during those nine hours, it went from 3 in the afternoon to 7 am. The jet lag was one of the most disorienting things I've ever experienced. I tried to sleep on the plane a little, but in a span of 3 hours the flight crew fed us dinner, it got dark out the windows and we were expected to sleep. There was a big map in the front of the plane that told us where over the ocean we were, though, and that was really cool. I was beyond excited when we finally landed in Stuttgart, Germany.
