April 24-26

Wow. What a week! It’s kind of gross, but I haven’t showered in 5 days...in my defense I lost an entire day time traveling, and since it was night the last time I was fortunate enough to bathe, I’d say it’s only really been 3.5 days. Lucky me!

Tuesday: Wake up. Strawberry mini wheats. Make up. Pack. Go.

*Brother Stokes gives my family passes to accompany me to the gate so we don’t have to say our goodbyes in the security line.

*Realize that the departure time on my ticket had been misread and my flight is at 11. Not 8. This explains all the strange looks and “comforting” reassurances during check in. They thought I was arriving 4 hours early because I was scared. How sweet...

*Take some classic “Need help?” pictures and talk with the fam  

 

*Go to the bathroom. See someone I think I know, but the lighting is weird and only half his face is visible. Instead of approaching a stranger and embarrassing myself more than necessary I shoot him a text asking if he just happens to be at SLC International. He is. I approach the guy that really isn’t a stranger and I don’t embarrass myself. We talk. We discover that we land in Amsterdam at the same time. He says he will pick me up at my gate once we land. We take a picture. See you in 12 hours...Bye...

*Horrox, not Horcrux. The 2nd counselor from my BYU singles ward is Brother Horrox but his name brings flashes of Harry Potter and soul splitting to my mind. Him and his wife sit across from me while I wait to board. New York, England and Spain. This is the first time that he will have been out of the country and all he is bringing is a backpack. Un freakin believable.

*SO hot, SO tall, SO volleyball. The BYU Mens Volleyball team was right next to the door as I was getting on the plane to Seattle so naturally I had to take a picture with them. I had a fight with my mind for about 3 seconds about weather or not I should, but I knew I would kick myself if I didn’t sooo I did. Really redundant. Sorry.

*MISSIONARIES!!! :D Why are missionaries so cool?! Really though, I love them with all my heart. Something about them is so adorable it makes me want to shrink them down to pocket size and carry them around. Literally half of the seats from SLC to Seattle were occupied by missionaries. The boy and the girl kind. There was a sister missionary sitting next to me so we started talking :) Her name is Sister Linford and she is from Salt Lake going to Berlin, Germany. I talked about how I have a secret vendetta against her high school because they beat us in the semi finals for state lacrosse my senior year. She talked about about she knows my friend Tehya. Then we talked about our missions. Hers to Germany and mine to Romania. Not to save souls, but to save lil babies. She asked how I became interested in the program, told her about my Human Development major...blah blah blah. She told me how her mom LOVES that kind of stuff and that she is the head of adoption for LDS Family Services in Utah. WHAT?! I began “gushing” about how that is soooo neat, and exactly what I want to do when I grow up. Well, Sister Linford informed me that her mom is always looking for interns, and for people to come and speak. Apparently they started this new thing where they invite birth moms, or the children to go around to different groups and give a presentation/talk/speech things. I gave her my information, and she gave me her mom’s so we’ll see if anything happens there!

*On the 10 hour flight to Amsterdam I watched 5 movies, 2 of which were a complete waste of time, ate a TON of food, and didn’t sleep a wink. I was in a state of shock when it came to the food. They just kept throwing it at us! I ate so so so much. And drank a lot too. Luckily the cute old lady I was sitting next to became my best friend and she didn’t mind moving in order to let me use the restroom.

Despite the look of everything, it was all DELICIOUS.

*Got to Amsterdam, met up with Jake, bought some Fanta, and bought a T-shirt. You have to go through security again before you board the plane so I went through security, sat down, and was promptly kicked out. In a nice way. Apparently you can’t just go through security anytime. You have to wait until your plane is boarding. Unfortunately for me there wasn’t any seating outside of the "after security" area, so I had to sit on the ground for a couple hours. In Romania you aren’t supposed to sit on the ground because it causes you to become infertile, so all the oldies waiting to go to Bucharest with me probably thought I was some savage prostitute out to kill my eggs...

*Chelsea finally came, we took some classy pictures via photobooth and flew some more...ate some more, and met up with the other girls right as we had to get our passports checked.

*We got our luggage, waited for 2+ hours to check in, sat around for another 3 hours because our plane was delayed, ate more free airport pity food, oogled over Liam Hemsworth’s ridiculous good looks and the fact that Kelsey’s boyfriend could be his twin, and sat there really bored. Romanians are a very quiet people. 14 American girls on “quiet” mode are about 50 decibels louder than anyone else. We could have been cited for disrupting the peace, but luckily no one cares too much at 1 in the morning. Chelsea slept like a rock the whole time. What a trooper.

SOOO much luggage!

*Kelsey #2 almost had brown sugar and Reeses confiscated. Security bros don’t know what’s up.

*Got to Iasi. E-mailed the fam, hopped in a taxi, rode in a terrifying elevator and went to sleep.

Waiting for our flight to Iasi

34 hours of travel, 2 hours of sleep. BUT I MADE IT ALIVE AND THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS. Right now I am in a tired funk...sorry
I have more pictures from the last couple days! Watch for up. Romania is beautiful.