On The Boat - We're Alive!

Sorry for not posting in a while, but I am way to busy to be on the laptop. There is so much that we have done; this entry may be a little long.

So back to my last journal in Seattle. The flight to Seattle reminded me of Otis Lippit, a camp counsellor that wants to become a pilot. We checked into our hotel (Comfort Inn Express) and it was a pleasant room. We then went out to Roasters for dinner that night. ‘Roasters’ is a big meat restaurant. I was actually quite disturbed by it. There was meat hanging in a display case. I am not a vegetarian, but I found that quite disgusting. Nonetheless, the meal was quite good. I had chicken. Dad had a rice bowl with turkey. We then went back to our room and got on the internet and started our blog, replied to emails, and such. We then watched a bit of TV, and then we headed off to bed, as tomorrow was going to be a huge day. Huge.

We woke up at 5:30 to be on time for our Chicago flight. The lines in the Seattle airport were huge, even at 6 in the morning. Finally we got to check in. It was a long process and we had to wait for a long time. Then we got flagged for extra security measures, because we only have a one way ticket, and that sparked caution. I was super T.O’d about that, but it actually turned out to be an advantage. We got to go in the ‘special’ line, which was practically empty, and it brought us to the enhanced security place. We got to skip a huge line that everyone else had to wait in. The only extra security measures they really took were looking through our bags more thoroughly and tested our bags with chemicals. It really wasn’t that bad. After that, we got to the gate check-in, and waited around there for a while. We grabbed a breakfast sandwich at Burger King. It was alright, but it didn’t compare to mine and Dad’s A&W mornings. Shortly after, we got on our flight to Chicago. The flight was three and a half hours. It wasn’t that bad. I had the window seat. I love the window seat. I saw all of the mountain ranges of Idaho and Montana. It was really cool. We arrived safely in Chicago, and we didn’t have much time to spare before our flight to Frankfurt, Germany. I quickly grabbed a Big Mac at McDonalds, and Dad grabbed a Quizno’s sub. At McDonalds, a girl that was about 20 helped me. She had the thickest ‘American’ accent ever. I almost started laughing. She was saying those typical American words like “HUH?” and stuff like that. It was funny. After downing that, we jumped in line for our flight. The plane was pretty big. It was 3-5-3 and had a 2^nd smaller deck for 1^st class passengers. I was seated in the middle seat and Dad was in the aisle seat. In the window seat was this old man who had a _{(what I thought was)} thick German accent. He was so funny. He would always tap my shoulder and tell me something super random or ask me questions. I found out quite a bit about him. He has a grandson who is 13 and plays a lot of baseball, he lives in Chicago, but was born in Croatia, and that is where he was going to visit. _{(I guess I was wrong about the accent)}. He was complaining about the person in front of him that had her seat reclined for the whole trip. It was hilarious. Every 10 minutes, he would tell me, “This isn’t the economy class, this is the suffering class!” Oh, and all he drank was apple juice throughout the whole flight. On the flight, two movies were shown. The first one was Arthur and the Invisibles, and the second one was called Goal 2. I watched the first one, and half of the second one. After seven and a half hours, the flight was finished. We disembarked and then walked into the Frankfurt airport. It is like a city! People are just smoking in the airport. My lungs are practically dead. In the airport, they had those cool signs with the flipping letters that said all of the flights. It was huge! Dad and I then realized that we have to wait 7 hours for our next flight, so we just wandered for a bit. We sat in the lobby of the nice airport hotel. It was really beautiful. We then walked to the train station in the airport. It was so cool! Trains went all over Europe from the station. I got some cool pictures of the station and the trains. After seeing the sights around the airport and killing about 2 hours, we sat down for a bit. I got a pretzel. It was so good. So me and Dad mainly just sat there, wandered around a bit, and killed time. When I went to the washroom, I got lost for half an hour. Everything looks the same in that airport. It is like driving in Saskatchewan. You can never tell where you exactly are because it all looks the exact same. After a while, I finally found Dad again. We ended up killing about 2 hours. 3 hours left to go. We found a nice quiet place that we slept at. Well, tried to sleep at. I didn’t fall asleep even for a minute. After that, I cracked open the laptop for a bit. All I played was Chess and Solitaire. It actually ended up killing about an hour and a half. After that, we went and grabbed a sandwich at a little place called Time-Out. I had a ham and cheese sandwich. It was pretty decent. Now we only had an hour left, so we went to our gate and just sat there for a bit. I listened to some music and Dad fell asleep briefly. Finally, we were on the flight to Greece! This plane was a smaller version of our previous flight, but looked generally the same. As soon as we were in the air, I fell asleep instantly. What do you expect after being awake for 30 hours? Dad woke me up when lunch came around. I was so groggy. I ended up not really eating. I can never eat when I am tired. I wasn’t that hungry anyways. It is hard adjusting to eating at weird times. It would have been like 2 in the morning in PST, so it is all messed up. After the food, I fell asleep again until we arrived in Athens, Greece. We finally claimed our bags for the first time since Seattle. We never had access to them. A nice Greek man was waiting for us with a taxi, and he brought us right to the Oscar Hotel. I was really tired. We were right by Larissa Station, which was a subway station, so Dad and I went to check it out. We also got some water. With 35°c weather, you got to have plenty of fluids in your system. In our hotel, there is a restaurant on the 2^nd floor, so we had dinner there. It was a four course meal! It was really good. After that, we went to sleep. Our first sleep in Greece!

Our first day in Athens we jumped on the metro and started to explore. We ended up spending the morning at the beach. We toured around downtown a bit and then headed home. That evening we met up with other Scholar Ship staff members and went out for another Greek meal. It was great to connect with others.

Day two we went on a city tour exploring the Acropolis and other historic sites. The evening ended up with another Greek experience at a Taverna (dancing, music, ouzo and so on).

Day three we are now aboard the Scholar Ship!