Safely arrived in Honolulu

After one of the longest days of flight I've ever experienced I'm finally checked in at the Lincoln Hall on University of Hawaii campus. I left Sweden at 12.05 and arrived in Hawaii at 21.15 (the same day, Sunday), approximately 26 hours of travel time later. The local time just didn't make any sense with that long a travel time, but looking at earth's rotation, flying west means prolonging the day. You literally fly within the boundaries of the rising/setting daylight. The best realisation of this was the flight from Amsterdam to Seattle, some 10 hours. But when I arrived, in local time only 1,5 hour had passed. Mind blown. At least it's better than flying the other way around and lose time...

All in all it was a pleasant journey without any hassle. The only unpleasantry I experienced was the landing at Seattle airport. I had fallen asleep right before landing and woke up as the aircraft slammed down on the runway. The second after that, the whole aircraft started swerving strongly back and forth. Having just woken up, still confused as you are by waking up in that manner after too little sleep, I was in that very moment convinced that things would go to hell. Thankfully it didn't.
A moment like that makes you miss your family even more, as if it wasn't hard enough already leaving today.

Now I'm getting ready for the C-MORE course which will start in earnest on Tuesday and then I will have my talk on my research on Wednesday.
I'm getting really nervous about it, which is natural I guess, considering the big scientific names that will be sitting in the audience. I'm sure this won't be the first time I'm in this position though, so I "just" have to make the best of it.
My supervisor has eagerly given me advice on my presentation and presentation technique, which has helped a lot even though it was a bit frustrating to see my whole initial presentation getting ripped apart. Oh well, I guess this is what it means to be a PhD student/candidate. After all, I'm here to learn from those far more knowledgeable than me.

So far I obviously haven't seen much of the place yet. However I did get my own room at the Lincoln Hall and the temperature at night seems to be comfortable enough (neither cold nor drenched in sweat). Lets see if I say the same tomorrow.
I know there are many different plans for tomorrow among the course participants (which have been organized in advance online) but I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with my one (out of three) days off on the island. I do have some last minute work to do as well.
Tomorrow will have the answers.