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My journey of a thousand steps started with my goodbyes to my family and friends over the course of the last month. On my last night I was in tears after a lovely family dinner at my grandmothers and then it was time to hit the road. I was driving to Beth's house in Essex to stay the night before we caught our nine o'clock flight from Heathrow and to avoid some emotional scenes at the airport on behalf of my mother. However, when we got there I was the emotional one, blubbering for about 10 minutes as I watched my mum drive away, knowing that I would not see her for a whole 12 months L. While at Beth's we did final bag checks and then tried to get some sleep without prevail. An epic chat meant we were left a couple of hours left before we had to get up again at 4 to make our flight. At the airport the next morning we met up with our fellow China vols, pleased to see one another after waiting since training at the end of June, bleary eyed from goodbyes and a distinct lack of sleep. We were catching a flight to Abu Dhabi and then connecting to a flight to Beijing 2 hours later, each flight taking about 7 hours. The first flight was OK; some isle banter and getting stuck behind a foot cart for half an hour with Pete. I watched The Hunger Games and tried not to cry. Once we arrived in Abu Dhabi airp ort, we were already tired but had gotten barely any sleep on the flight. We headed into the airport and bought some cheeky MacDonald's (the first of many) to wait it out for next flight. We got on the plane only to find that there was a technical fault. I had been hyperventilating for most of take-off, landing and a few patches of turbulence but now I was hyperventilating at the thought of the plane falling out of the sky. We ended up being delayed for an hour and a half on the tarmac without air conditioning. Finally we took off and I got a good night's sleep, arriving in Beijing at the airport.
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