Day One

We made it!

The flight didn’t start out so well. We arrived at the airport with five people, seven pieces of carry on luggage and ten pieces of checked luggage. I am sure we looked like a motley crew. The porter was really helpful and tried to get someone to help us with our check-in, but no luck. Evidently, the Continental Business First class check-in is self serve. When we got our boarding passes, Sam was assigned to sit three rows back from everyone else. We tried to get help from three different people to sort it out, but they each told us to essentially “negotiate with the other passenger to switch seats.” Helmut was not happy with this answer at all and got pretty upset with more than one person. We finally did end up asking the passenger to switch places and he was happy to oblige. Finally the flight attendant came up to help and once he found out we had already taken care of it, he actually had the nerve to tell us we should have let him do it. “Sometimes the other business class passengers do not take kindly to being asked to move, so we prefer you give us the opportunity to take care of it.” At that point Helmut’s ugly American behavior surfaced. There was loud talking and talk of the horrible state of the airline industry in United States, I was thoroughly embarrassed. It all got worked out. The rest of the flight went great. Sam ate her dinner and then fell asleep for the rest of the flight. I tried to sleep, but didn’t have much success.

The drive from the airport to our hotel in Leiden was beautiful. The landscape reminds me a little bit of Idaho, except instead of cows there were sheep and instead of truck stops there were windmills. It was mostly farmland with a few thatched roofed houses interspersed. We saw lots of tree lined canals and streets (very much like the drive into Twin Falls). At this point, it is all so new and interesting to look at.

The Leiden Holiday Inn is living proof that you can make something look way better on the internet than it is in real life. It reeks of cigarette smoke and is kind of grungy, but it is close to the school. I have new resolve for finding a place to live with lightening speed.

We took a taxi over to The Hague to pick up our rental car and happened to pass the kids’ school on the way. On our way home we stopped by and looked around. We couldn’t do too much looking around because security was tight, but what we saw looked good. There were tons of kids out playing soccer and a fleet of charter buses from Germany here for a tournament. It seems like I will be able to get my sports fix here.

At that point it hit me…like a ton of bricks…

must.go.to.sleep!!! I had been up for over 24 hours and my body was revolting. I hate that jetlag feeling, in my opinion it is the worst thing about taking an overseas assignment.

I took an hour long nap and felt like I could make it a few more hours. We hopped in the car and drove around until we found a grocery store. When I walked into the store, I got an overwhelming feeling of dread. I had forgotten how hard it is to shop in an unfamiliar country. All the meat was in Dutch…I need to get a phrase book so I can make sure my ground beef is really ground beef (by the way I lost my Holland book somewhere in the move…ugh!).

So here I am living in two tiny hotel rooms that open up right in front of the “kids club” (very loud), paying for the internet at 35 cents a minute and eating out of a mini bar. Remind me why I thought this was a good idea…