Thursday, August 1, 2013

Now in Sweden

Nicholas Angell Sweden
Our boarding pass and passport!
We are now in Sweden, and have completed the move to Europe! I borrowed this picture from Nicholas. We departed from Minneapolis at about 7:30 PM, to take an overnight flight to Amsterdam. Over the past month, I had prepared for our move to Karlskrona- cleaning, packing, getting the condo in order, all of the general last-minute things. However, it was not until we were halfway across the Atlantic ocean, dozing off, that my head snapped up with the realization- I was moving to another country. Granted, yes, a temporary move for 8-9 months- but nonetheless, moving to a country I had never been to and didn’t speak the native language.
Wow. Thank goodness I had, and have, Nicholas here as my guide and my rock. Being that he has been here before, I can rely on him to help me out a little bit. 
I had gone through the motions of moving, and said my good-byes and see-you-laters to friends and family. Started making plans for them to visit. But it took being halfway done with an eight-hour flight (the first leg in our journey) to process what I was actually doing. I’ve never experienced a feeling quite like it, and don’t truly have the words to describe it. The realization we were moving to Europe started hitting me as we were halfway across the Atlantic. It continued the further our travels brought us. After two delayed flights and all of our luggage having been lost, we were finally in Copenhagen ready to be picked up by a representative from the team and head to Karlskrona. Sitting at the airport for six hours, we finally recovered two of our bags. During this entire time, Nick primarily spoke Swedish- to everyone we spoke with, to the guest service representatives at the baggage counter, and to the team representative. This continued on our drive to Karlskrona, and at the hockey rink where he dropped the bags off. Once we got to the apartment and put our carry-ons inside, he suggested a walk in the city. We hadn’t gone more than a block when I started to cry and be unable to stop it— I had succeeded so far over the past several hours. The lack of sleep, being overtired from travel, and all of the realizations of moving had finally truly hit me, and I was in the middle of a city crying. Talk about feeling alone in the world- of course, Nick was by my side, but he was fitting in and fluent in Swedish, not trying to leave me out, but essentially doing just that. Time to go to bed for me, and take on the city on a new day. One way or another, we are now in Sweden.
So our journey has now truly begun!

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