Hello everyone!

This post is going to be slightly out of order, because I also wanted to tell you the story of how my unit got here, to West Virginia, but I didn’t have time to do it earlier…\

It all started back on Monday, July 22nd as every person of our unit, the Swiss unit 11, travelled to the airport in Zurich individually. So I took the train from Chur to Zurich at 8am, Swiss time, where I met some of my friends from my unit. Except for one of the big backpacks falling from the racks and onto my head, we just chilled and talked during the entire ride.

At our meeting place at the airport, everybody got their tickets and name tags for the luggage, before we went and dropped off the big backpacks. After all of that and getting through security, it was already like 11.30 am and we made our way towards the gate. Since it was still pretty early, we had some free time to check out the duty free stores. Simply waiting at our gate was not going to work afterwards, because our gate had been changed, so we all ran to the new gate.

My heart stopped, as I got stopped at the boarding pass check, because I had to go and talk to some ground staff. There was nothing to worry about, the woman only asked, if I speak either English or Portuguese and informed me that I was going to be sitting next to an emergency exit.

The first flight to Lisbon was very short and calm. I didn’t even get to read, because I was talking to a Canadian woman sitting next to me the entire time. Once we had arrived in Lisbon, our passports were checked again, before we had to run to our next gate to catch our flight to Washington DC.

Again, I was pulled over and had to answer the woman that I do indeed speak English and then she told me that I would be sitting next to the emergency exit again. I was really relieved, because I often struggle with leg space during flights and I got plenty of space both times.

Everything didn’t go as smoothly as it did the first time, because I was wearing my ankle brace, just to be safe, but the flight attendant didn’t accept it, so I had to sit somewhere else during take-off and landing. I tried to read for as long as I could, in order to avoid any jet lag, which worked very well for me. I only slept around two hours during the 8-hour flight. There were some turbulences at the end of our flight, which made the Spanish unit, that were on the same flight, scream.

We landed at around 8pm (20:00), American time, which would be 2 am in Switzerland. As if that wasn’t enough, we went on to stand in line to get our passports checked for almost 3 hours, before we could get something to eat for the ride to the Summit.

This was the point where most of the unit took out our unit dressing gowns, so that we were nice and comfy for the 6 hour bus ride. I slept through most of it and we were here before I knew it. So we finally made it to West Virginia on Tuesday, July 23rd at 6.15 am, after about 28 hours of travelling.

As we heard, it had been raining for some time before we arrived, so we were very thankful, that some people had already set up all of our tents

so that we wouldn’t have to do it in the middle of the night.

Now, that it has been warm and dry for a couple of days, I wouldn’t mind some light rain during the night, so that the heavy air gets a little lighter. Anyways, I’ll see you again tomorrow!

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