Travel from Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Thursday January 5th to Saturday January 7th, 2012
Just a few of the items needed to get me overseas. Trust me, I could never photograph all the paperwork required but I'll share these because they were the easiest to obtain.......relatively speaking.
After everything that has transpired over the last few months and weeks (the paperwork, the luggage, the travel to Calgary and Toronto, the sore back etc) I finally boarded a plane to Riyadh. Well my first flight was to Washington DC and then to Doha Qatar and then finally to Riyadh Saudi Arabia. It was set to be a very long and very uncomfortable trip but I felt I was prepared.
Watching the sun set as I headed to DC.
I really did think that I was done with the stress and delays and that from here on out it would be smooth sailing to Riyadh. Why I felt that way I wasn't sure. I guess I just couldn't imagine anything else that could go wrong. Insert another stressful moment here. I get to DC and attempt to do the final check-in for my flight (I was only half checked-in in Toronto. They check my luggage through but I couldn't get my boarding pass until I got to DC) where it turns out the lady who was checking people in was not familiar with Saudi work VISAs so thought mine had expired. I knew it had not but I had no idea how to explain that to her. She of course refused to issue my boarding pass until she could confirm it so I ended up sitting around for a while. All this time I was attempting to contact someone in Saudi or anywhere that could confirm it for me. Eventually another guy attempted to check in as well, she also thought his VISA had expired but he explained it to her so I was able to get a boarding pass and relax a little bit.....but as you can imagine that was a very stressful 30 to 45 minutes. After all the stress she very quickly changed my seat when I requested (from the middle to an aisle) which I was very thankful for.
The flight to Doha was almost 12 hours long. My plan (like on most flights) was to sleep…..but my back was quite sore and I couldn’t sit in the same position for very long so found myself wandering the aisles a lot. I did watch a few movies (including both HP7s.....Harry Potter 7) and ate some good food (the ice cream was greatly appreciated) and arrived in Doha unscathed (mostly).
I then had a 6ish hour layover in Doha……which was painful for sure but I did manage to sleep for a whole lot of it. It was only a short flight to Riyadh from there. Finally at around 0030 on January 7th (Saturday....please remember I left Toronto at around 1630 on Thursday January 5th) I arrived in The Kingdom along with a few other North American nurses. It took some time to collect all our luggage and load it up in the bus and then it was about a 45 minute bus ride to our new home.
Eventually, just after 2am, we pulled up out in front of MCV 46E, where I was greeted by my new roommate, Catharine. She even had homemade soup all ready and waiting for me (lucky for me she had been working night shifts so being up that late was not much of a stretch for her.....I hope). After a quick shower and a small bit of unpacking it is safe to say I was very happy to get into my bed and try to get some sleep.
The next day (well technically later that same day), Catharine woke me up with a cup of tea and then a tour of the area. I then had a meet and greet session with the other new nurses and our orientation group to get my schedule for the next few days. It was nice to see we were all a little jet lagged and overwhelmed by everything.
With all that being said, I am very excited to be diving into this next chapter of my life totally head first.
Julie
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