Day 1 

Pre Flight

    My journey started off at JFK airport where I would be traveling via Swiss Air to CERN. First off, the check in process ran smoothly. Even my trip through airport security with all my computer parts ran smoothly, I wasn't stopped,  just passed along to go to my flight. After airport security i had two hours before my flight boarded. Hence, I went for a walk around the endless airport. At one point I had reached the flight observation window, where I saw an A380 for the first time! Now those of you that don't know, an A380 is a giant passenger plane with two levels of seating! It was enormous and warranted a snap to one of my plane loving friends. After sitting and watching planes for an hour, my flight was just about to board. Boarding was one of the weirdest processes i have seen out of all the airlines i have been on. They started with first class, then families with children and finally there was just an all board for all rows. Therefore, this caused a surge to get onto the plane which I wound up on the back of the line :( . 

Flight


    As I began to board, I experienced my first culture shock of the trip. The flight attendant said to me, "Bonsoir." All of a sudden, my brain started racing trying to decode what she had said and tried to mangle a response in French. In the end, my brain just died out and I said, "Thank You." Overall, I was just caught off guard but the transition was interesting to see early in the trip. Now just so everyone knows, I have a very beginner French knowledge. I have been learning French intermittently over the past three months using Duolingo and the Youtube channel learn French with Alexa. Through these two sources, I have a pretty decent reading ability while my ability to speak is still slow.  Back to the flight, in the economy class where I was sitting the aisle consisted of two groups near the windows and one group of four in the middle. I had a window seat. Every seat came with a pillow, blanket, and earbuds.
    Now to takeoff, it was around sundown when our flight went to takeoff. This produced the most stunning views in the sky. After takeoff, about an hour into the flight the first meal was served. The flight staff quickly said all of the options for the dinner. Thanks to Duolingo, I understood one, "la beaouf," which incidentally was what I wanted! The meal was pretty decent for airline food, there was a main course, vegetable, salad, roll, and dessert. Once dinner was finished, the whole plane basically went to sleep. Although, due to my excitement to start work the next day I couldn't sleep, so I just sat and watched a few movies on the in flight entertainment system. After about 2 hours, all the lights came back on the plane and the flight attendants commenced to hand out towlets. Straight after that, breakfast was served consisting of some greek yogurt, croissant and frozen orange juice.  The meal was great! About an hour later, my plane finally landed in the small sized airport of Geneva. To get off the flight rather than most flights I have been on, all the passengers actually walked down stairs to a shuttle bus that brought us to the customs area.

Landed  

    Customs was a smooth process and only had taken about a minute. After that, I got my bag from baggage claim and began searching for my program leader. Looking around, I realized he was right next to me the whole time! He brought us(me and another student from the program) from the airport straight to CERN, since our apartments weren't ready. So, when we got to CERN we stored our luggage in his office and began to go through the registration process. Quick note, on our way to get registered and within 5 minutes of being at CERN we met the director generale of CERN!!! Back to registration, first, we registered with HR to get our Swiss and French card ( Since CERN is in both Switzerland and France employees must have national ids for both countries). Then, we headed over to the badge services to get id cards. Finally, we registered our computing accounts in the IT area. 
     After finishing the whole process above, the group went to go get some lunch at one of the many food venues at CERN. Note, at this point it is like 4AM in the US( time difference of 6 hours) and I barely got any sleep on the plane. So, trying to restore my energy with some food, I got a beautiful plate of calamari, pasta and a vegetable! The meal cost me 8CHF which is basically one to one with the dollar. Once I had finished eating my plate of food, the group drove over to the apartments and I began to unpack. The apartment's quality is comparable to university style dorm apartments. Going to the grocery store was the next adventure to unfold. We walked about 8 minutes to the grocery and when we arrived we knew what nothing said. So, it was an adventure trying to buy little things like laundry detergent or dish soap. Finally, after all that I, went into my bed and hit the hay for the night! 

Up Next: This was only my first day! I have so many more adventures to go over in my first week!