Travel and Arrival

My first flight left San Francisco International Airport at 1:25pm on Thursday January 23rd. The first flight was short, only one hour to LAX. I had a 4 hour layover there, which kind of sucked, but gave me time to check in, go through security, eat, and have a little down time before my next flight. I was dreading my next flight. It was 13 hours to Istanbul, Turkey. I was really hoping that I would be able to sleep on the flight since it was overnight. When I got on the plane, I was amazed with how huge it was. I never thought a plane would be that big. Even though I had heard of huge planes before, and I know it wasn't even the biggest one, it was still crazy. I sat on an aisle seat towards the back. I had nobody sitting next to me which was nice. I began the flight by watching 2 movies. We were fed dinner on the plane as well. After a while I decided I should probably try and get some sleep. However, I was only able to sleep for about 4 hours off and on. By the time I got to Istanbul, I was so tired. The airport in Istanbul was kind of chaotic. When you get off the plane, you get off by going down stairs and then there are buses waiting for you that shuttle you to the terminal. We had to go through security there again, which I wasn't expecting. Also, my gate number for my next flight wasn't written on my ticket anywhere, so I had to figure that out as well. I made it through and found my gate with about 20 minutes to spare before boarding my final flight to Dar Es Salaam. It was going to be a 6 hour flight. I was so tired that I was falling asleep before I even got on the plane. I slept almost the whole way there. When I arrived in Dar Es Salaam, it was 3:30 in the morning on Saturday January 25th. Luckily I was with another girl from my program, Renee, so it was nice to have someone else be with. We filled out our necessary paperwork and proceeded to customs. They fingerprinted us before entering the country which I thought was pretty interesting. The airport wasn't as crazy as I was expecting it to be. It's actually a really small airport and our flight was the only incoming flight at that time so it was pretty empty. We had a driver pick us up and take us to the hotel, which was about a 40 minute drive. I really wish the sun was up so that we could've seen everything. When we got to the hotel, we checked in and then went to our room. I called my mom to let her know that I had made it safely. Neither of us were tired, so we stayed up until the sun came up. Once the sun was up, we went outside and walked down the street that the hotel was on. We also went and walked on the beach for a bit and then decided to go have breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast we went back to the room to watch a movie. We both ended up falling back asleep at about 9:00 a.m. At around 3:30 p.m. our program director came and woke us up so that we would be able to sleep for at least part of the night. We spent the rest of the day eating dinner, hanging out at the pool, and hanging out at the Hookah lounge at the resort. Our last roommate, Julia, showed up at around 10:30 that night. Shortly after we all went to bed because we had to be up early the next door for our first real day of orientation!!