It took us much much MUCH longer to get here then expected. Our original plan was to depart from Tulsa connect in Atlanta to go to JFK and then directly to Prague. The flight from Tulsa to Atlanta went smoothly, we got to Atlanta and found our next gate and then grabbed some lunch. About an hour before we were supposed to depart we found out that our connection was delayed and that the delay would mess up our connection in JFK so we went to the call center to speak to a rep. The phone call lasted a long time and it ended up with us having an 8 hour layover that would take us to Amsterdam then to Prague, instead of being in Prague by 10am we wouldn't arrive until 3pm. It was our only choice so that's what we did. We were concerened about our luggage so we asked the man behind the desk to make sure our luggage would follow our new route and even though put in the request, or whatever, he informed us that there was no real chance of them taking it off of the JFK flight. As if that was upsetting enough he told us that he wouldn't give us our new boarding tickets because our visas expire on the 14th of May and we aren't coming home until the 22nd. He directed us towards the international rebooking booth, which we didn't know how to find because his directions were too fast and he was grumpy. On our way to trying to find the rebooking booth we stumbled upon the customs area, where we thought we needed to go, where we talked to the information desk. Let me just say that his help was....unsatisfactory. By this point I had had enough but we decided to go up the stairs where we found my favorite person that we met the whole trip. The lady that helped us at the international rebooking booth got us all set up with making sure we got our bording passes and luggage. After we settled that we got dinner and sat our gate until 9:35.
The plan ride was really bumpy and the man infront of me didn't know the meaning of personal space because for the entire 9 hour flight he had his seat laid back as far as it possibly could go, good think I'm short although it was still uncomfortable. But that was probably worst part of it. We had an extremely smooth landing in Amsterdam, which was nice because that is usually the scariest part!
After landing in Amsterdam we thought we had plenty of time to find our gate but we were wrong, we had to go through security to get to our gate and the line was extremely long. Thankfully they opened up another line and it started moving a little faster. After we got through that we literally ran to our gate (with the help of those moving platforms). I had 35lbs of carry on stuff so it was really uncomfortable trying to get there so fast but we did it! Unfortunately it didn't matter because our gate had been moved down to the end of the terminal, so we scurried to the new gate and waited to be checked in. I'm not really sure why but we had to be bused to the plane, maybe because it was small? Anyway, we got on and made our way to PRAGUE!
Once here we went to claim our luggage, remember it was supposed to be following us, but it never came up onto the luggage belt. After all that we had been through we were really frustrated but went to talk to the baggage people and the woman said that our luggage was on it's way over, it had gone to JFK. So we should get it tomorrow. I will probably never fly again without carrying and entire set of extra clothes and some kind of toiletries, BIG mistake not to!
After we walked through customs, really we just walked right through, we met up with an ISA staff member and 3 ISA students that were waiting for us. Then we were all driven to our apartments. Our apartment is really big and really nice. We were all pretty excited about it, it's the perfect place to live in this beautiful city.
Lets see..a quick run down of our day would be Cassi and I finding our way to a store to buy some things (we took a tram). After we went to dinner with our roomates. After dinner Cassi and I decided we would just head back to the apartment because we haven't slept since we left Tulsa, it took us forever though because we took the wrong tram to some sketchy place where we then had to get on a tram to take us back to where we had had dinner. We decided walking would be better so we probably walked about a mile hoping we were going in the right direction. Thankfully,we had gone the right way and found our way back to our lovely apartment.
Tomorrow we have orientation, a walk around Prague basically. I think it's going to be really cool so I'm very excited!
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