Today was really early start with the majority of us being woken up at one in the morning by a fire alarm. The dazed students stumbled down the emergency stairs out onto the cold French street in our pyjamas. The head count revealed six students were missing however to the relief of everyone it was a false alarm. Eventually we made our way back into the hotel were the missing students were found, having never left their rooms. This discovery came only after Mr Croft and Mr Dent were on the verge of kicking in the doors to the rooms with a considerable amount of yelling coming from Mr Croft ensuring that everyone in the hotel was wide awake. The rest of the nights sleep was unrestful for everyone involved, other than those who slept through the fire alarm ( James A, John, Jorden, Joshua, Dante and Sarah) and did not even remember being woken up in the morning.
To our displeasure our bus was delayed by an hour and a half because of a serious crash on the freeway, meaning that we could have caught up on the sleep that had been taken from us in the night.
When our bus finally arrived we meet our tour guide and our bus driver, Colin and Eve, who will be taking us around the Western Front over the next few days. We began our journey to Belgium leaving Paris behind us. The bus trip also allowed for the game of sleep selfies to continue with more victims falling to selfie snappers. On the way we made one stop at Canada's main war memorial on the Western Front. At Vimy Ridge we saw the evidence of how destructive the war was to the land, as many craters and unexplored shells remained in the area with fences and warning signs everywhere. We were also able to explore the trenches allowing us to gain a better understanding of the soldiers experience. Even though they are not Anzacs we could see that they faced many of the same struggles and they fought at many of the same battles as the Anzacs.
Hardly any of us realised when we crossed over the border into Belgium from France because of how insignificantly it was shown! It is easier to identify when you enter the shire of Collie than entering the country of Belgium! We finally arrived at the town of Ypres where it was evident the difference between the parts of France that we saw and this town of Belgium. Driving through the town, everybody was astounded at how many chocolate shops we could see as we drove along just one street, it was love at first sight for many! Settling into the hotel we encountered some unexpected surprises for the girls, as we found out that their were five people to a room with one shower per room. This is going to make for an interesting couple of days! Dinner tonight was a restaurant chosen by Mrs Wellington and Mrs Abbott. When we entered the restaurant there was sweet talk and bribery by the two selectors, handing out free chocolates to everybody, even having a spot prize raffle on the go. It seemed to have paid off fairly well as they scored a combined total of 29 out of 50.
Editors note
This puts them in equal second with Mrs Salmeri and Mrs Turley (Chinese in Istanbul) and Mr Blackmore and Mr Heptinstall (no choice in Istanbul). Mr Maxwell and Mr Dent are in third with 23 (gagging in Canakkale) while Mrs Curran an Justine are last (no food in Canakkale) because no one can remember their score! Mr Croft is leading comfortably with a brilliant 36, only stymied by strategic voting by a cut-throat gang of disgruntled contestants who haven't yet worked out how to play the game without cheating (strategic voting is what they call it!).
Macca is up tomorrow night.
Justine and Curran got a 24!!!!!
ReplyDelete