The Journey Begins - A blog by Corrinne Pickle and Annie Farley

We started off our journey at 6AM on July 8 at the Bagel Shack in San Clemente, CA. Arriving at the LAX airport we soon discovered that our plane was delayed to Boston, which made us nervous that we might miss our connection to Amsterdam.

After the 5 hour flight, from LAX, we landed in Boston to discover that our next plane to Amsterdam was delayed as well; which meant that we would probably miss our connection to Tanzania from Amsterdam...just our luck.

As we finally boarded the plane in Boston and got comfortable in our seats, the pilot announced that the weight of the plane was unbalanced and must be redistributed…we returned to the gate only to find out that there was also a “fault in the engine,” that resulted in us being stuck on the plane for 4 hours before even taking off. Twelve hours of screaming babies and horrid body odors, left us very anxious to get off our plane!

We missed our connecting flight to Tanzania and we were rebooked for the same flight on the following day, which meant we had a day to spend in the city of Amsterdam! Definitely was not a bad place to bestranded. On our way to the hotel we stopped to buy some clothes since the airline had our luggage. Excited and freshened up we headed straight to the train station to explore the city.

Our lack of speaking and understanding Dutch led us to the wrong train, but thanks to a mystery man wearing a green shirt, we safely made it to Amsterdam Central. First stop was to get some koffie and dinner. It didn’t take long to discover that “coffee shops” in Amsterdam are not exactly what we were looking for!  As we continued along taking in the sights and smells of Europe, we stopped to have dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant.

So enthralled by what this unique city had to offer, we spent the majority of our time walking alongside canals and taking pictures. Our curiosity put us in “quite a bind” as we unknowingly began to wander into the Red Light District - the one place we had been warned by our parents NOT to go to… whoops! Once we realized, we quickly got out of there!  After this we decided it was probably time to get our weary traveling selves back to the hotel for some rest. 

5 hours of sleep later, we woke up very ready to finally reach our destination! We sat in our seats, which just so happened to be next to the emergency exit - more legroom for us! We also made a German friend named Timo (he said his parents couldn’t quite pick between Tim and Tom, so they just mixed them together). He attempted to teach us German, and kept us entertained during the flight.

Greatest memory of this specific flight: 
     Annie: Corrinne that’s your foot right?
     Corrinne: What are you talking about?
     Annie: We were totally just playing footsies?!
     Corrinne: Uhh no… check out the old man behind you…

We have now safely arrived in Tanzania, picked up by Ksusha at the airport, and ready to get a good nights rest so we can wake up and see what tomorrow will bring! We are so Thankful to be here!