Belgium and beyond

So on Wednesday, at ten at night, I arrived at school with my friend Catherine (thanks for the lift!). Met up with everybody because we were going to Belgium and France with school, to see the battlefields, trenches and war graves from WWI.

We got on the coach and went to the top floor, right at the back near some sixth formers... They're like half-teachers. They'll tell you to behave but they don't really give a toss. We were in seats of two so I paired up with Ollie, except we were sat in a big bunch of friends. Initially it was me and the... ecstatic Ollie, Alfie and Jack F, Will and Jack M, Sophie and Zoe. all the way through the journeys we kept changing seats around and later Rachel joined us for the ride home. Anyway, on with the narrative.

We drove for hours on end, stopping once at a service station. There we played house of the dead four! I didn't even know that existed. You get an Uzi lite gun each which just kicks ass. So yeah, we were there at like half past one in the morning on an arcade game, and It felt weird. Almost like a dream. I wanted to buy someone a teddy because I felt really good but nobody particularly wanted one. Humph.

So we set off again, with Ollie flashing his torch out of the window to try and blind drivers. Great going... Ahem. We travelled for hours more, surviving on Tic Tacs and Editors (http://www.editorsofficial.com/). We eventually arrived at Dover and saw the white cliffs a little before boarding and early ferry. I think we were on it for about two hours. There were like, three cafes/restaurants, an arcade (With house of the dead three, but we knew about this one. Two shotguns. Awesome.), and a highly overpriced shop. I bought a portable game of Downfall to play on the coach, mainly because Zoe liked it (sigh, me eh?).

Eventually we arrived in Belgium and travelled some more to France. We stopped at a (what we thought at first was) large graveyard full of white grave stones. We found the grave of a fifteen year old boy too, and we read some of the monuments. And Zoe kept repeating a poem, suicide in the trenches.

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned
at life in empty joy
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark
And
whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and
glum,
With crumps
and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one
spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who
cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

She actually only repeated the last verse but I posted the whole thing as I think it's a great poem... Even if we did study it for two months in year eight (Grr).

So we then moved on and I was so tired at the time I'm not even sure where we went to at what times... I know we went to a museum, or two. And some trenches where I bent all my fingers back falling down some ridiculous stairs. Anyway, hours later we got like two and a half hours free time in Eypes, a really nice town. And lucky for us, the fair was in town! So first we got a great deal on a ruck of Belgian chocolate before going on the bumper cars for like two hours. We walked around the shops and bought a few cheap things (I got a notebook that I later left in the hotel, hooray). We then finally got to go to the hotel, a pretty damn nice place too. We got an hour to unwind and unpack, I stayed in a two person room with Andy, a dodgy TV and en suite bathroom.

I changed from my travelling T shirt, jacket and walking boots to a nice black shirt and pants and Converse. We all went down for tea, thin chips and a pretty tasty piece of chicken. We then went out to watch a daily ceremony, the last post. They play a trumpet, lay a wreath and play again. Quite powerful stuff. We then headed back to the hotel to muck about for a few hours.

As I said, I was sharing a room with Andy. Well, I was out and about the corridors so I left him to it, inside the room with the key card. I said I'd ask when I wanted in. Well after two hours of running about laughing, I decided to go back. Knock knock. No answer. we tried this for ages, screaming and kicking at the door before we decided to go around looking for him for half an hour. Got no where. Went to reception and got a spare key card, unlocked the room... Fast asleep on his bed with the TV on. Bah.

The next morning we had a really nice breakfast buffet, I just had lots of bread and I got the last chocolate croissant. Stuff you all! Ahem. after, we headed to the coach and waited before realise George, Ben and Dan were missing. Ten minutes later they show up half dressed and yawning. always a funny sight.

the rest of the day was spent in France looking at a few more sights, quite nice but still tiring. The journey back felt alot shorter too.

And that's about it! Generally, everything was fine... Five people got pulverised for being outside water fighting but apart from that it was all cool. Got my photos developed today and they're good (Zoe's on ten?! How did that happen?), got some nice ones and some silly ones. Caroline will love it next year and I really, really want to go again, mainly because of the amount of time we got to spend with friends. So awesome. It's always nice to be back in England though... When I got in, I had beans on toast, a bath and bed. Hehe.

In reply to comments:

Alfie: I can't find your video.
Kelly: I'll be back soon. IOU 1 huge.
Caro: No I didn't get any belgian rock. Just chocolate.
Zoe: I'm a dope, yes I left my notebook... Oops. but my friend Vicky, from huntingdon is going next week so I'll ask her to get it if she goes to the same place.
Caroline: How does that tune go?

UPDATE: After reading Zoe's blog (no, you can't have the adress) I remembered she LOST MY HAT OVERBOARD. Oh well, it's fine, Cause it's Zoe.
UPDATE 2: Forgot about Sophie and Mark. Well, me and a few people finally realised they are together so me and Jack F decided to do a routine "Love check" Where we'd peek our nosey... Noses over, to see how things were. We got bored when the Uno deck was brought out.

Viva la France! And Belgium of course.