Day 15: Travel Day

Saturday, April 29, 2017

          TODAY WE GOT A BREAK!!!!!! We flew out of Cairo, and now we are in Europe!! I've never been anywhere in Europe so I'm very excited for it. We got to our hotel in Brussels, Belgium around 4:45pm, and we were all at our (thank god!). This next leg is going to be RIDICULOUS!!! There is going to be so much traveling, trains, and I'm am assuming not a whole lot of sleep. There will also be not as many Asian tourists around, (except us) which I am definitely okay with. Because we flew out in the morning, and arrived late afternoon we didn't do any scavenging today. However, because we got our books today we were allowed to start planning out everything. Getting this book of 8 countries, multiple cities, over 250 scavenges, and having until Wednesday to get done as much as we can, was very overwhelming, and my stomach dropped past the floor. I sat on the floor and just curled in a ball for about a minute trying to process it.
          And then I realized, I'm in freaking Europe!! This is totally awesome! I need to stop thinking about this for now and just enjoy the fact that I am in an amazing place with amazing people and amazing things to see. So after the meeting finished, we went back to our room, put on the warmest clothes we packed, and us and 2 other teams went out to dinner. We went to this restaurant near our hotel that was heavy seafood. We had a LOT of mussels, but they were very good so it was ok. After dinner we were looking for authentic, Belgian desserts like chocolate or good ice cream. Everything closes around 5 on weekends, so there was no dessert places open. So we just ended up getting McFlurries and going back to the hotel because why not eat fast food in Europe.
          I am ready to fall asleep. Tomorrow is going to be a very different day than today. Our Europe leg is starting, which is a DIFFICULT par 6, and I am excited. From what I've seen tonight Europe is awesome. And, people speak English, there are toilets, lots of public transportation, and lots of chocolate. What more could I ask for?! Anyways, I am off to dream of flying all across Europe at a leisurely pace. I am excited for the days to come. I mean, we're travelling across a portion of Europe without using planes over the span of 4 days, how hard can it be? Until next time!! ;)

Daddy's View:

Remember in the Shawshank Redemption, when Tim Robbins pulls his amazing escape?  He chisels the wall every night for years, he crawls through miles of sewage pipe, and he finally emerges from a womb of mud far away from the prison into freedom.  Thunder, lightning, rain… he screams, stretches out his arms, can’t believe his fortune, disappears into freedom. 

That’s how I feel on these long travel transition days.  You’re totally drained, so appreciative for air conditioning, happy to not fight traffic for an hour and then walk a mile to get a galabiya.  The tender embrace of the neck pillow and the airline seat… I fall asleep before the plane door closes and wake up when we land.

It’s even better this time around – we have been rapidly circumnavigating the globe, with the less developed countries up front, just b/c that’s the way the world and airline maps are laid out.  So we land in Brussels.  It’s quiet.  It’s orderly.  It’s clean.  It’s polite.  I feel like I’ve been ingested by Canada.

For the record, I was the SECOND person to get a beer at the hotel.  And that was only because Bill didn’t need to check in.  All was joy and relief and decompression.

Then he handed out the scavenge book.  The last time I felt like this was freshman chemistry, mid-terms.  It was a test with those blue packets we got in college, like mini notebooks with lined paper.  It was not going to be multiple choice.  the sound of the empty notebook hitting my desk - screaming “fill me with chemistry” – felt like one of those stun grenades cops use for riots. 

There are like 250 scavenges.  Across eight countries.  Like a dozen cities?  I don’t know, I haven’t counted.  It’s just words I don’t understand on pages that exist only to remind me of my ignorance.  The word “overwhelmed” is “inadequate.”  Whatever the opposite of hyperbole is, that’s whatever words I can think of to describe how intimidating the book was.

Sydney’s eyes were big.  We both let out a long exhale.  I gave her a hug, said “How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time…”  I folded up the packet, put it in my pocket, never looked at it for the rest of the night and we headed out to dinner.  Mussels and fries – it was totally a scavenge, but we couldn’t claim credit for it b/c we couldn’t scavenge until 7am the next day J