Blog post
What a crazy last week of the semester... Staying up late every night, games and team activities, plus preparing to say goodbye to everyone! It's been insane, and right now sitting in the Cairo airport I honestly feel like I could pass out from exhaustion.
So the week started off with some teaching from a teacher that I still find hard to listen to... But after that the rest was done by a lady who has worked with ywam for many years so she shared her different experiences and gave us some awesome tips! Alongside that we played some sort of team game every day and I think I've got to say, my outreach team is pretty epic! We ended off the teaching week with one final game on Wednesday that lasted till close to midnight. The object of the game was something similar to capture the flag, but instead of 2 teams, we had 7! This made the game significantly harder and finally got to the point where teams had to quit in order for the game to actually end.
Thursday.... Ahh Thursday... Such a relaxing and fun day.... I think besides 2 hours in the morning I slept almost the entire day till 4, where a couple of us had to rush to get dressed for the Christmas dinner. Christmas dinner was just spectacular, we had thick juicy had and boiled potatoes with garlic bread and different salads. It was great fellowship and it was preceded by desserts at the kathedral! I hadn't eaten so much chocolate and cake in such a long time, it felt amazing to be eating so many delicious home made desserts from people here at the base. While we were eating some of the students had organized songs or skits to do up on stage and it was great! There were skits on soup eating ginea pigs, there was yodelling, carolling, and so much more fun stuff and it was all closed with dance. Just about everyone got into it and it was the least classy, most fun dance to watch and be part of!
Unfortunately at 11:30 on Friday I had to leave. All my stuff packed for both desert and winter on my back, ready to go and conquer the world!
I arrived at the bus terminal with only a second to spare and got on to the completely empty bus and as it turned out, that was quite a blessing. I ended up talking to the bus driver for the entire hour ride to the airport and learned tons of cool things about Ålesund and was offered some sweet opportunities for when I came back. So I'm really hoping that I'll be able to take him up on some of those and enjoy the city in a new way!
My first flight took me to Oslo, where unfortunately my flight was delayed, this started a trend for the rest of the trip... So after Oslo I got to Brussels, now Belgium waffles , but I did get out of the airport for a whopping 15 minutes! After rushing back into the airport, I got on my weird, flight to Athens.
I arrived in Athens at 1 am and waited over an hour for my backpack to arrive, but by 2:30 am I was ready to hit the town!
Athens was a total whirlwind of a night, I hit McDonald's twice, made some interesting friends, slept under a fig tree in the rain and enjoyed a super fiery sunrise the next morning! It was such a crazy night I don't know exactly how to explain it in text without sounding crazy, so I'll save this section of the trip as something I'll tell ya'll about when I get home!
Oy, typing this all out on a phone is not fun...
Anyways, so after my night in Athens I got a little lost... I was wandering around trying to find headphones when before I knew it, Athens turned upside down on me and I was walking down streets I knew nothing about! With only about 3 hours till my next flight I was starting to panic, but luckily, it started to dawn on me that I may have just been walking around the centre where I started the trip off with. So after walking another 20 minutes I found the McDonald's, (my safe haven) and the bus to the airport. I was safe and next all I had to do was argue with the people at the airport when I got there.
So apparently when flying to Qatar you need to have every single detail of the trip planned and ready to be shown when you get to the counter, and for most of you who know me, you can guess, I certainly didn't. I had to explain, in precise detail why things were missing, where I was staying and how I was leaving. It was an interesting process and it ended with me talking to a supervisor, signing a few papers and swearing an oath... Boy what an experience!
I did finally get on my flight and I landed in Cairo around supper, and had to wait 5 hours till my final flight to Doha. Now the Cairo airport is kinda dirty and didn't have a whole lot to it, so there's not much to say there. I don't have wifi here so Ill just sit for 5 hours straight listening to music and writing this, but it's nice to relax and just people watch.
Anyways that's all I've got for now, but I'm excited to write about my next leg of the story, seeing my family and enjoying Qatar!!!
