The Adventure Never Stops, It Changes Forms.

MSU Stadium as seen from the library

     Life is full of adventure. This cliché lesson took me awhile to learn upon returning from a year abroad in Dinan, France at 16 years old. “How could the monotony of a normal American school day be an adventure?”, I thought. It seemed more like a boring chore. I graduated high school and while I was excited to start college, I was also sad knowing my next big traveling experience wouldn’t be anywhere in the near future with the soaring costs of higher education. I felt that I was stuck in a mundane limbo, just waiting for another life changing adventure to come along without understanding I was currently experiencing just that. My last adventure, studying Physiology at Michigan State University, recently came to an end and I think it is only fair to talk briefly about the end of my last adventure before moving on to my new one. During my time at MSU, I learned what it was like to study for 16 credit hours, work four jobs (at the same time), barely pass a tough class, perform highly technical scientific research, take the medical school entrance examination (and do well), successfully interview and be accepted into medical school and graduate all in 3.5 years! It was a whirlwind of an adventure and I had mixed emotions with how seemingly quickly it wrapped up.

It still didn't feel real that
 I would exchange snow
for sand so soon

     My last few weeks at MSU had a sense of urgency to do the things I had neglected or was unable to do in previous years. This included visiting many of the local bars and breweries, visiting with friends, being part of a protest march and taking some additional time to enjoy the beauty of the large campus. I relished in those last few weeks taking time to really appreciate university and those around me knowing I’d likely never see some of my classmates again. 
     However, time only lasts so long no matter how badly you want it to stand still and soon came the time that I was to say goodbye to my boyfriend, board my train and leave East Lansing to begin my long, four day journey to Alexandria, Egypt: December 15, 2016 at 8:45 am. I had never ridden on a train in the US before but it was exactly how I imagined the old infrastructure to be… my train broke down and was over an hour late to Chicago. While many passengers had to change their plans for their day in Chicago, I luckily was not impacted by the excessive delay. My next portion of the adventure was to find the blue Clinton station two blocks from the train station downtown Chicago in order to take the metro to the airport. Unfortunately, my GPS wasn’t working very well with all of the grandiose buildings surrounding me so I was relying on this little map I had taken a screenshot of. I dredged through the snow with my 50 pound suitcase and backpack and while looking lost at a corner I met an Indian business man traveling to upstate New York doing the exact same thing I was doing, both of us clueless as to how to get to the Clinton station from where we were. With his help, we finally navigated our way to the station. Upon arriving at the station, I had trouble paying for my ticket at the automated machine and so my new friend from upstate New York ended up getting on the metro that left just as I was coming down the escalator.

Leaving the East Lansing
Train Station

 However, I met a new friend that was closer to my age while traveling to the airport on the next metro. She was a student studying counseling at the Moody Bible Institute and she was on her home to Texas for the holidays. We ended up talking the entire way to the airport. Once at the airport, I had to find my way to a shuttle to go to my hotel as the flight wasn’t until 6 am the following morning. Finding the shuttle took another hour as I was having trouble understanding where I was supposed to meet the shuttle despite having walked through the area when I first arrived at Chicago O’hare. When I finally got to the hotel in the early evening I called it a night so that I could take the 3:30 am shuttle to the airport. Upon arrival at the airport at 4 am, two hours before my scheduled, international flight not a single Air Canada employee was in sight. Two finally showed up at 5 am, one hour before the flight was to leave for Toronto! 
     Luckily, it was a short 1 hour flight to Toronto where I then had an 8 hour layover. If you are going to have a long layover, the international terminal in the Toronto airport is a good location for it. The departure gates are like cozy restaurants with free iPads for you to play with and no obligation to purchase anything. There are even huge signs that tell you to sit there and that you are not expected to purchase anything. I fully expected a restaurant staff member to come around to inform me of either how to order through the iPad or to do a small business-y spiel but, to my surprise, it never happened. 

City of Toronto from the air

My time at the Toronto Pearson Airport wasn’t bad but boarding my flight for Istanbul was a bit hectic. Both a flight to Frankfurt and my flight to Istanbul were boarding at the same time at adjacent gates that were maybe 15 feet apart. I stayed out of the mob and waited to board until they opened it up to all seats, all zones to avoid the craziness and to take advantage of standing a little bit longer. On the flight, I was sitting next to a third year Canadian college student studying neuroscience going home to Turkey to visit her family. We actually didn’t start talking until we were about 2 hours until landing but then we talked until we landed so maybe it was a good thing we didn’t start talking sooner as we wouldn’t have gotten any sleep! 
     In Istanbul, I had a very long layover of 13 hours. Originally, my plan was to leave the airport and visit my friend, Naz who lives in Istanbul and was a Rotary exchange student in my district of France. However, she ended up studying abroad in France during the fall semester and wouldn’t be home until January. I thought about leaving the airport on my own but decided against it primarily because I was a solo female traveler. Apparently, if you have a layover over 12 hours/flights for more than 24 hours total you are required to claim your luggage and recheck it all. This ended up being a huge and unexpected hassle but I had a lot of time to spare so in some ways it was sort of nice to waste a little time. Unfortunately, I had to pay a $30 USD entrance fee for Turkey despite staying in the airport the whole day simply because I had to recheck the luggage and leave the secured area. It seems that in many middle east countries, you have to get your visa from a different area than passport control and, usually, it isn’t set up so that you have to clearly bypass the visa area to go to passport control. After waiting in a long line for airport control, I was sent back to get the visa and then had to once again wait through the long line. Then I had to wait for luggage and then I had to find my way to the Turkish Air check-in.

On the journey to Istanbul

 I don’t fully understand why, but Turkish Airlines has 4 or 5 different groups of counters and you, for some reason, can’t go to just any of them. You have to go to the one that is connected to your specific flight to check in your bags. I was sent to two different counters before arriving at the right one but then the guy I had didn’t speak much English and after many attempts to tell him that I am trying to recheck my baggage and that yes I understand I am 13 hours early for my flight but I want them checked anyways I was told to go talk to a supervisor which required waiting in an even longer line that was mixed with people trying to go to the regular Turkish Air counters as well as those wanting to talk to a supervisor. The lady at the counter didn’t want to check my bag that early but then decided she would after a bit of explaining that I was still in transit. Unfortunately, The Istanbul Ataturk airport isn’t a great place for a long layover which made my time there pretty miserable. I had just gotten off a long flight and there wasn’t anywhere quiet to lay down and wifi isn’t free or readily accessible. I ended up sitting in a decent location near the bathrooms, departure screens and just close enough to have a spotty internet connection from one of 
the restaurants with wifi that I knew the password to. The disadvantage is that it was a main hallway and was constantly very loud. For anyone flying through a country without free wifi, make sure to look up wifi passwords for the airport before traveling. It allowed me to be a little picky on where I wanted to sit and I didn’t have to purchase something if I didn’t want to. 

Surprisingly, they fed us on the 1.5 hour red eye flight to Alex!

     My flight to Alexandria finally took off at 12:45 am and landed at 2:45 am. Once I had my bags I went outside and found my driver Ghergis who took me to my parent’s apartment! Soon after arriving, the 5 am morning call to prayer began welcoming me to Egypt. My long awaited traveling adventure had just begun.