Hi everyone,

This is the first time I will be writing about my adventures in New Zealand and Australia. In this part I will be talking about the day of my departure to New Zealand, the journey itself and the first days.

I had the intention of sleeping till noon Tuesday 30 September because it would be my last day in my comfy bed, awesome room, quiet home and safe invironment. I wanted to take full advatage of it. It turned out to be wishfull thinking as I was so nervous I woke up around 8 am and started right away packing for New Zealand (yeah I did it on the day of my departure). During preparing the last things and checking 300 times whether I actually packed everything I could possibly need, my mother asked me whether I was feeling nervous. At that time I could honestly say 'no' because I knew I would be travelling over 40 hours before the adventure actually started. At 3:30 pm I was picked up by my father, his girlfriend and my sister to take me to the airport. After a last bit of advice about security and precautions from my mother we said our 'see you laters' and I was on my way. After picking up my little brother and sister from school we proceeded to the airport. We arrived 3 hours before my plane would depart so after having checked in my luggage, which would be checked through until Auckland, we went to have some drinks in the restaurant. After a while also my twin brother, his girlfriend, my big brother and my other sister showed up. An hour later I decided it was time to say my goodbyes and clear security to start my journey. As always it felt surreal and at that time it hadn't sinked in all the way.
In the terminal I looked up my gate and stolled around a little bit before actually going to my gate. On arrival at the gate somebody called my name. It was a buy accompanied by a girl. I was confused because the guy didn't seem familiar. Then he started talking about Wouter, my twin brother and I realised he had been to one of our awesome project X-like house parties. As it turned out he and the girl (whether it was his girlfriend, a friend or maybe even his siter I don't know) were on their way to South Africa to participate in a cheetah project. I felt kind of jealous as I love all types of cats. After chatting a little bit we could board the plane. I was unlucky to be placed between two overweight men in an aircraft with very narrow seats. But it was only a flight of one hour so I got over it pretty quickly. The flight was very smooth and very fast I could see the lights of London. On arrival in Heathrow I would have to change planes by myself. It looks silly but as I had never done this before I felt a little bit nervous. It turned out that it was very easy to change flights as in every airport it was always very clear where I had to go to. My next flight would be a 7-hour flight from London to Dubai. I would fly with Qantas and after having looked up some information about Qantas I had high expectations. And I have to say, Qantas delivered. First of all I flew in an Airbus A380-800 which is currently the biggest passenger aircraft in the world. Every seat had a little screen in front of it. On the screen you could watch series, documentaries, movies, you could play games, follow the flight path of the plane and you could even experience the flight through a little camera installed in the tail of the plane. Very nice to look at during the lift off and landing of a plane. The flight to Dubai was all right as the meals were of reasonable quality and the flight attendants were friendly. I saw some episodes of Modern Family, a documentary about Australia and the Shawshank Redemption (an awesome movie!) and after that I tried to sleep a little bit. On arrival in Dubai I was stunned by the terminal that was specifically designed to only receive Airbus A380s. I was blown away. In Dubai I only had to wait a little bit over an hour before departing on a 14-hour flight to Sydney. This flight I tried to sleep some more as I was getting tired. Beside this I watched again 2 movies, Braveheart and Planes, played some games and watched some series. I got during the flight a little bit hungry as we only got two meals in 14 hours. On arrival in Sydney I was feeling very tired and was worried I would experience a major jetlag in Auckland. At the security a pair of scissors was found in my hand luggage, something that was overlooked in Brussels, London and Dubai. The took the scissors of me and I was sent on my way. I had to wait over 5 hours in Sydney which would become torture because I was feeling so sleepy but I couldn't sleep as I was afraid someone would steal my backpack and/or I would wake up I find out my plane had already left. The last flight to Auckland I couldn't sleep either because the seats were uncomfortable. I watched Spiderman 2 instead. The flight was very smooth. On arrival I was very dissapointed to found out it was raining hard. At customs my luggage had to be checked which seemed to take forever. I was tired and wanted to sleep. An hour after I arrived I finally could leave the airport, take the bus and go to my hostel, the Newton Lodge near the center of Auckland. On arrival in the hostel I introduced myself to the guys who were sleeping in my room, had a shower and went to bed. After watching the first 10 minutes of a Belgian series called 'Samson en Gert' I fell asleep. I woke up around 5 am. This is when it finally hit me where I was and how far I was from home. I got a little panic attack and strated doubting my ability to make the year successful. I guess I was feeling a bit emtional because of my jetlag. After some troubled thinking I somehow managed to fall asleep. The next morning I got up early at around 6:30 am. I left the hostel and went to the harbour of Auckland to do some exploring. The first thing that I noticed was the wind. There was so much wind and a little bit of rain even. Not at all what I pictured New Zealnd to be like although I knew it is one of the wettest countries on earth. That morning Auckland looked a lot like Belgium, weatherwise. At 11 am (Friday) I was being expected at the Conservation Volunteers house near the city centre in order to start my 2-week nature project. On arrival 6 other volunteers were already waiting for me, most of them German and one Swiss girl and one British girl. I immediately got the feeling that it would be a good group as everybody was very friendly. The house where I would be staying, on the other hand, was a different story. The house itself, kitchen, bedrooms, etc. were allright. The things that bothered me were that there was no WIFI, there was no heating only some electric heaters and that we had to pay to wash our clothes. Normally I don't really care about WIFI but I still had to arrange some things for my journey after the project ended. Now I always had to go to the city in order to get some (free) WIFI. Not ideal at all. The heating was not really a problem, only that we had to change the electrical heaters constantly to other rooms as not every room was equipped with one. I really was surprised when I got to hear that we had to pay 3 New Zealand dollars in order to wash or dry our cothes. Except for these 3 points was everything else quite all right.

More will follow soon!

PS: I wrote this part very fast without double checking spelling afterwords as WIFI is scarce and unpredictable here! I'm sorry :)