What a day this was! Our trip really starts on August 16th when we boarded our flight on Scandinavian Airlines at Newark International Airport. When we got to our seats we were thrilled to see that there were touch screen monitors on the backs on the seats. We watched movies (Monsters vs. Aliens and He's Just Not That Into You), played Sudoko and watched the views in front of and beneath the airplane from the exterior cameras.
After two delicious meals and 8 hours in the air, we arrived at the Stockholm Arlanda airport on the morning of August 17th. Next stop, Jonkoping, but how??? We walked aimlessly around the airport for over 2 hours trying to figure this out! Do we take the train? The bus? The express train? We finally decided to take the express train to Stockholm city and decide from there how to get to Jonkoping. We just wanted out of that airport! And, we wanted to get rid of our extremely heavy and bulky luggage. We bought our tickets for the train and walked down to the platform where we saw the train pulling in. We had to run with our luggage to get to it before it left us. While we were at the airport, we bought some minutes for our phone. At this point we were missing more orientation then expected and wanted to alert our Jonkoping contact. After we boarded the train and sat down we decided to add the minutes to our phone, which we borrowed from our friend, Alana. Come to find out, the phone was dead. Perfect!
When we get to Stockholm City, we are faced yet again with options. We can either take the bus to Jonkoping, or the train. We weigh the options and decide to take the 4 hr train ride, which had a connecting train in another city. We sat next to two older Swedes. They were very nice and talkative. We could not lift our luggage ourselves, so one of these men helped with Jen's luggage while another man helped with Christine's.
We arrived at our connecting location and had no idea what to do next. Jen asked one of the workers and we were directed to our next platform. We had trouble getting our luggage through the door of the station, so two men (our age) jumped up to help us. They each grabbed one of our suitcases and walked with us to our platform. Though this was a little scary to have someone help us, it was with the best of intentions. One of the guys was from Somalia and was thrilled to have met some Americans. The other one asked Christine for her number after we boarded the train. hehe.
After arriving at Jonkoping we caught a taxi which took us to the university. We decided to look for the student services building to find out how to contact our international director. As soon as we walked in, we saw the accommodations office. Hurray!!! We went there and got the keys to our apartment and one of the workers drove us to our apartment. We were soooo anxious to drop off our luggage and be done with it!
After a little while, we decided to walk to the campus. Christine tried to catch the last bit of the last orientation session of the day while Jen went to the internet provider and set up her internet. We met some of the international students from the Health Sciences school at Jonkoping and one of our contact persons, Karin. The international office at the school let us borrow some sheets (and dishes if we wanted) and other items for our apartment.
Needless to say, we were exhausted when we got home and were happy to go to sleep. Our experience today was that everyone we met, no matter what the circumstances, was very kind and helpful to us. We were quite surprised at just how nice everyone is.
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