Ready to Go: The Life of Kristina and Other Interesting Stories: January 2015

It's been almost a year since I stepped on the plane that whisked me away to Ukraine. I've just realized that I never really wrote about the ending of my journey and the nightmare/dream that it was. So buckle up, kids because here's my ending adventure, six months late.

Since I was going to be picked up around 1AM, I just decided not to go to sleep. My beautiful host mom Tanya stayed up with me and we cleaned and drank tea while we waited for the school van to pick me up. I had already said goodbye to Sophia and Nikita, as well as my host dad, Alex. Finally, my ride came and I said goodbye to my sweet host family and the house I had called home for five months.

We spent the next hour picking up all the other teachers and then we were at the airport. A small disclaimer: I really don't mind airports. I kind of like the hustle and bustle and the promise of new places and adventures. Think on that when I tell you that this was the worst airport experience of my life. Waaay worse than being denied boarding on our way to Ukraine. Every step was slow, slow, slow. Plus, we teachers had an extra step since we had overstayed our visa-free time. The schools paid the fee, but it took everyone at least an extra half hour to go through all the paperwork.

I was one of the lucky ones who went through first. I got to the gate around 5:40AM and our plane was scheduled to leave at 6:10AM. I legitimately thought the other teachers wouldn't make it. They did....at 6:08AM.

Our next stop was Amsterdam. We had a five hour layover there, so I had convinced the other teachers traveling on my same flight to leave the airport and explore the city for a couple hours. I had combed the Internet for all the information on the airport and what we should do with our limited time. However, after the awful Kyiv airport scare, I was rethinking my plan to leave the Amsterdam airport. Luckily, I decided to suck it up and go explore.

We got into Amsterdam around 8AM and immediately found lockers to dump our carry-ons in. The sweet thing about the Amsterdam airport is that the train station is right beneath it. Another beautiful thing about Amsterdam is that there is SO MUCH ENGLISH! In Ukraine, good luck finding someone who can speak English, and forget about English translations. Everyone in Amsterdam was so friendly and helpful; we were on a train hurtling towards the city center in no time. An example of Amsterdam friendliness: we couldn't figure out why the doors of the train weren't opening, and a nice man pushed the obvious button to get them to open and then said, "Enjoy your time in Amsterdam." I wanted to cry. Also, I was going on 24 hours without sleep so that's cool.

On our way to Amsterdam

So sleep deprived

I'm pretty sure this is the train station...but don't quote me on that

Once you leave the center train station, you're right in front of one of the many canals that criss-cross all across the city. I had read that we should take a canal boat tour to get an initial sense of the city. So we all boarded a boat and settled in for a beautiful tour through Amsterdam. We met some pretty cool Canadian ladies and we passed by several museums and the Anne Frank house. My favorite part of the trip: I was looking up through the boat's glass ceiling as we passed through a gate and this old man sitting up on the gate made eye contact with me and smiled and winked. I think I'm in love.

I'm on a boat

After our fantastic tour, we used our last half hour or so to walk through the Red Light District. If you don't know what that is, go ahead and look it up. I don't really want to explain it here. It was definitely interesting. We also spent our last Euros on some yummy waffles and finally headed back to the airport.

Red Light Distric featuring: my fabulous hair

Giant Nutella? I need no more convincing.

If you're not jealous...you're lying

Once again we were off! We had another two-hour layover in Minneapolis and then back to Salt Lake! It was SO WEIRD being back in the States. I loved it, but I was definitely disoriented and shaking. Plus I was jet-lagged and grumpy. My wonderful roommate picked me up from the airport and brought me my favorite BYU things: an Asiago bagel, fudge, and chocolate milk. Then we headed to Chipotle so I could have some decent Mexican food, and within the next couple weeks, I was back at BYU!

....apparently TOO pumped to be back

So this post is already ridiculously long, but I just want to catch the old people up with my life over the last six months. It's been so good, and a lot of that is because of the person I became in Ukraine, so thank you to everyone who supported me in that adventure. Since being back, I've changed my major to Communications with an emphasis in Advertising. I love my classes, my job, my roommates, my ward, and yes, even the weird BYU bubble. Did you guys know that life is just the coolest? I think everyone should keep a blog because it really puts things into perspective. Nothing calms me down more than reflecting on my life and putting that into words to share with the people I care about. Maybe I'll try to be a little more consistent with this, but I also don't really like taking pictures and everyone knows a blog is pretty much all about the pictures. In the spirit of that, I think I'm going to make a little photo montage right now of my last six months and that's going to have to suffice. And then I'm going to follow that with some selfies because note about selfies: they're amazing. Once I finally got a laptop, every so often I'd take a bunch of selfies and now I can look back and see myself at different times in my life and that's just so cool because selfies are personal and special and fun. So don't hate on the selfies and feel privileged that I'm sharing a few of mine! Hahaha....enjoy!