First of ESO: Trip to York

Six o'clock in the morning. It was still dark when we met at the school, and the air was decidedly crisp. As for me, I'd just arrived from Cáceres, quite a drive in the wee hours of the morning. We were all rather tired, but very excited: today was the day we'd been waiting for. Soon, it was time for hugs and a last “behave yourself”, then we set off.

The bus was rather cosy, but the mood was fine, and it was nice and warm. Halfway to Lisbon it started to rain -we didn't get much of a view of Portugal. The bus left us at terminal 1, and it did take us some time to find out that we were in the wrong place. So back out into the rain it was, lugging our cases onto another bus and then off again. Good news, though: the ride was for free.

We'd arrived with quite some time to spare, to avoid undue hurry. The downside was, of course, that the wait was rather on the long side. Once through the controls, thus, we set up camp at the far end of the terminal building and had breakfast. Alejandro tried to teach us how to imitate a duck (I think it was a duck, but I'm pretty rusty on bird calls). He did wonderfully, and we found out just how difficult bird calls can be -the trick eluded us. The long wait shortened in this manner, time flew by and we boarded the plane, nerves singing.

The flight was blessedly uneventful, and we got to Manchester on time. But the bus to York hadn't arrived yet. Apparently, there'd been an accident on the motorway from Manchester. However worrying the reason, the extra waiting time actually came in handy: we made our first little purchases on English soil. It was beautiful how the kids managed to obtain sweets and fizzy drinks; Cherry Coke went down a treat. 

 Then the bus arrived. Despite the nerves, some of us managed to get a bit of shut-eye: it'd been a long day. Once more, there were no problems at all. We arrived on time. 

 The longed-for moment had arrived: York! We were all very nervous, wondering what our 'families' would be like. How would we manage? And then, they were coming...