Journey, Arrival and a Thunderstorm

Wow, that was a journey!

On Thursday, I had to get up at 2 am. After taking a shower and packing the last things, my parents, Jochen, Oliver, Chrissi and I went to the airport in Hamburg by car. The ride took about 2.5 hours.
At the airport we met YFU Travel Staff members (You really couldn't miss them with their bright yellow shirts.). One of them gave me my ticket, a big yellow tag with my flight information that I had to wear during the whole journey and some more flight information. Somebody actually wanted to give Chrissi a ticket, too because she was standing next to my dad who was holding one of my suitcases with the YFU tag on it ;)
Then I had to check in. It took a while because the line was long. Afterwards, I still had some time to spend with my family and Chrissi in the hall before I had to go to my gate. Finally saying goodbye was weird somehow because I still wasn't really aware of the fact that I'd be gone for 10 months. I think I'm still not. So I think saying Goodbye was much harder for my family and Chrissi than for me.

When arriving at my gate, I met a lot of other YFU students. Our plane started at 7:55 am. The flight to Frankfurt was okay but my ears hurt very bad when we landed there. In Frankfurt, we had to get to our gate immediately but when we arrived there, we still had plenty of time. So I went to Mc Donald's with Arndt to get something to eat. Shortly before boarding, I met Markus.
The flight to Washington (we took off at 12:20 pm) was very long, it took about 7.5 hours. They had three movies on board and I started all of them but put the headphones away after a few minutes because the movies were pretty boring. I spent most of the time listening to music or sleeping (and sometimes both, don't ask me how that worked).
When we finally arrived in Washington, D.C. at 3.00 pm we had to get through Customs first which means that we had to show our passports, visa and travel forms and then had to give our fingerprints and have a photo taken of us. The line was very long so that took a lot of time. Afterwards, we got our suitcases and met people form YFU Travel Staff. After a loooong time they had collected all the students that had to spend the night in Washington and then we still had to wait a long time for the car that'd take us to the hotel. Unfortunately, we didn't all fit into the car so it took another long time until we were all at the hotel. I finally arrived there around 6 pm and was so very tired.
There was pizza for us but I wasn't hungry at all, so I waited until YFU Travel Staff told us the time we had to be back downstairs the next morning and called my hostfamily and my dad. I also tried to call my mom but suddenly the phone wouldn't work anymore for some reason.
Going to bed was a relief. I shared a hotel room with two other German YFU girls. The hotel was amazing and the best thing were the huuuuge beds!! Sleeping on them was very comfortable.
We had to get up quite early in the morning again because we were taken to the airport at about 5:45 am.
At the airport, we had to check-in again. Then we were taken to our gates by YFU Travel Staff members and I had to say goodbye to Markus. At the gate, we (the YFU students that went to Detroit which were pretty many) had to wait for a long time again because our flight that was scheduled at 8:55 am was late.
When I finally arrived at Detroit and went to the luggage claim area, I saw my host family. My host mom Sheila, her mom and her kids Courtney (14), Jacob (9), Michaela (7) and Grayson (5) were waiting downstairs in front of the moving stairs that I went down. They were holding a sign saying "Welcome Maria Ralle", Jacob was holding beautiful flowers and Grayson was holding balloons. Courtney was filming me coming down the stairs.
First, Sheila hugged me and then Jacob gave me the flowers and Grayson gave me the balloons. I was so happy - this was such a nice Welcome!! We went to get my luggage and then we went outside to the car. They have a huge and comfortable van with even a DVD player in it! During the ride that took about 1 hour, we watched Cinderella Story. Before arriving at my new home, we went to Red Robin for lunch. I had a great cheeseburger there and french fries.
Then we went home. The house is soooo huge! It's a white stone house with a big garage and a big garden. First, my room was shown to me. It is so beautiful! It has a pink carpet, yellow and violet walls with flowers on them, a very comfortable bed, a huge wardrobe, a sideboard, a desk, a cupboard and a bedstand. All the furniture is white.

My room is upstairs, next to Courtney's and I'm sharing a bathroom with her. There's much pink in it!
All the rooms are huge and the house has a huge basement. The whole house is air conditioned which is very good because the outside temperature is about 28 degrees celcius.
I unpacked my suitcases after a tour of the house and gave my presents to my host family. They are all so nice! I called my mom and then Sheila showed me a list of the classes I can take at school. We'll go to the school on Wednesday so I can choose my classes. Later, we had dinner (spaghetti!). During dinner, there were very dark clouds approaching outside. When we were done, a thunderstorm started. Sheila was worried and turned on the TV. Suddenly, the dark sky outside became green. I'm not kidding, it was really green! Courtney said that green sky means tornado and then, there was a tornado warning on TV. Sheila said we should all go down into the basement. Down there, we, the kids, played monopoly and Sheila and her mom continued watching the weather stuff on TV while we were all waiting for the thunderstorm to stop. It didn't became a tornado in the end but was a very bad thunderstorm. Some important highways in Detroit were flooded afterwards. Fortunately, the power didn't go off.
After the thunderstorm, we went back upstairs. Courtney and I did the dishes and afterwards, we all watched a movie together. The little kids went to bed around 9 pm and I finally fell asleep on the couch because I was so tired! Sheila woke me up later when everyone went to bed.
It was an exciting first day!
I didn't do much today so far. The power didn't work for a couple of minutes this morning and when it worked again, we had pancakes for breakfast. Afterwards, we watched TV for a while and then I took a shower. Now I'm writing this and tonight we're going to a movie night at the kids' school.

I'm having an awesome time so far! I'm so happy I have such a wonderful host family.