LA to London/ Heathrow to Belgium !

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We crossed the date line, and due to endless chatting and messing around with Anna, we were just getting to sleep after the guy behind us told us to settle down when the lights on the plane came back on. This was because it was around 8am London/ Heathrow time, the equivalent to 3am Los Angeles time. Basically, we lost a sleep. The opposite to what we needed at this point. After an average breakfast, we landed and did the whole check in/security motions, and settled down at the airport lobby. My stomach did not, however. This airport is MASSIVE ! I had to take the London underground to get to the check in for my flight to Brussels, which kinda shows how big this place is. Having nothing to do for three hours we lay around sleeping like homeless people, some of us sleeping, others doing last minute brush ups on the language of their country. When the time did come around to leave each other, we had a big ol’ farewell sesh, and went to our gates to await our plane. Luckily, my troublesome guitar was awarded hand luggage status, which helped me avoid a 40 euro charge. However, upon arriving on the plane, there was absolutely no room for it. Not in the overheads, not on the ground, and no spare seats. I was facing leaving my baby on the cold airport tarmac. But unlike many American airlines, British airways have a heart, and they actually ended up putting the guitar behind the captain’s seat in the cockpit, which I found pretty awesome.

I slept the entire flight, despite the seats being the worst we’d had over our many flights. So I then awoke to people leaving the plane, and collected myself and got off the plane. The reality struck me like a punch in the gut that I was finally here in Belgium, and ready to stay here for a year. Combined with a sick stomach due to changing time zones, horrible American food and average airline food, I wasn’t feeling terribly good. This completely evaporated when I walked through the doors entering the collection zone, where I saw my host family, the Compere’s holding a sign reading ‘Bienvenue Henry !!’, and shouting and waving at me. Meeting them was awesome, and we made our way towards Verviers, to the town of Thimister, where they (and now I) live. Their house is a beautiful big wooden house, and I was shown upstairs to a nice big room that was mine. I was stoked !. Anyway, no time to rest as we were off to meet up with Chris (a fellow traveller to Belgium) and his host family as well as my counsellor, inbound coordinator and co. I met them all, and my ‘Oldie’ (Eliza Castillo) who has been in Belgium around 6 months already, and she basically tells me what the haps is and how everything works. I tried some cake that had brandy in it, which tasted as though it may have been the majority of the ingredients, but it was by all means nice. Then it was back home, and into my first PROPER bed to sleep in in more than 4 days. I was in HEAVEN, and slept till around 12 the next day.

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