The Journey

The only thing that I remember about the Journey over was arriving to the airport. I took a little cocktail to knock me out before we even boarded. I remember being anxious about leaving the states and going to a place where I may be an anomoly, attraction, or source of interest for the natives. Overall, I was excited to go. After we boarded, from that point on, all I remember is waking up for meals. Not even once did I go to the bathroom, too. When we landed, it seemed like the scene from "Home Alone" where the family is running through the airport. Yeah, that was us. I was still, a little groggy, but I kept up as well as everyone else. We had to catch a train in Frankfurt, that would take us to a smaller train station that would, in turn, take us to Ilmenau. I don't much remember anything on that ride either. I slept through it until, maybe ten minutes before we arrived to the smaller train station. After boarding the train to Ilmenau, I was fully awake and rejuvenated. I have no memory how long that ride was, but it was long enough for me to want to get off as soon as possible. When we finally did get off, Torsten, one of the mentors, grabbed up us and all of our stuff and took us to the Kursburo. That's where we would do all of our in-processing and where some groups would be taking classes. We found out that we were the first group to arrive. Then, they shuttled us up to the dorms, or barracks rather. The rooms we stayed in were in worse condition than what I had stayed in when I was in the military. I'm not one to bitch about conditions though. I got to chose Chuck as my roommate. I thought that this trip would either make or break our friendship at some point. But, I was excited to at least be there.