My first term at TGS will take me further away from home than I have ever been before – the first country we’re staying at is Peru. To get there, I had to take on a 20-hour trip via Amsterdam. In the end I was awake for over 27 hours in total.

The flight to Amsterdam was nothing special, except that I missed the boarding slot for UM passengers. Because I am not 15 yet (2 month too young) I still have to book flight with UM status with KLM. And because it wasn’t a German airline but rather a Dutch one, the food was actually quite good as well; I got a piece of Dutch cake.

After a short stay at the airport of Amsterdam, I embarked on the 13-hour flight to Lima. Crossing the Atlantic from the Northeast to the Southwest is incredibly boring, but I wasn’t able to sleep either because it was a day flight. So I decided to finish the books for English class and later met three new TGS Students also on the flight.

After hours of flying we arrived in the Caribbean – even from 11,000m above it, it looks incredibly beautiful. We passed some islands in the lesser Antilles, but I am not quite sure which ones they were.

Then we reached mainland South America in Venezuela. I’m not exactly sure what that landscape under us was, but for large parts it looked like a huge brown swamp (not on this photo though)

And we also passed over pretty impressive rivers

And then we came into the tropical thunderstorms, with clouds towering up to 15km high and fairly decent turbulence. The thunderstorms continued into Colombia but ended over Peru, where the clouds changed to normal stratiform clouds.

Well, and then I arrived in Peru. After having to push an old man in a wheelchair because the airport was understaffed and I, as an UM, was not allowed to leave the security area without attendance, I was brought to the hotel at which our school is staying. After briefly saying hello to everyone who was already there, I went to sleep – for the first time on the southern hemisphere of the earth.