Saturday 10th July - 1:30pm, plane to Croatia

We finally arrived in London at about 8:15pm yesterday. We also met a man in a World Challenge jeep who dropped off some kit we hadn’t received. We then went up to our rooms to look around and dump our bags. I was in room 27 on floor 2. I really didn’t manage to work the keys properly though. The one for my room door worked but the one for the corridor didn’t work at all. Shannon was next door in 26 and Jas was in 28. We all then went outside and had a meeting while sitting on the grass. Margaret divided up what we needed to do for our roles. Lauren, Izzy and Jemma went to work out which bus we needed to catch this morning while I went with Natalie to figure out who was in which room. Her and Jacob had to figure out fire escapes and stuff like that. Louis and Jasmine found somewhere to get tea.

There was a slight incident when the boys and Jasmine went to get their food without anyone knowing where they’d gone. The boys didn't seem bothered about the fact that some people hadn't eaten, but Jasmine seemed really upset that she hadn't realised. I think so far, this is the only thing that's happened to annoy people slightly. It was all sorted pretty easily though, although we did get told that we couldn't eat inside the actual restaurant so we had to stand outside.

When we got back to our rooms all us girls ended up hanging out in Lauren’s room and it was nice to just talk and get to know each other. I expected that we would feel awkward but we didn’t and Natalie and I ended up staying in Lauren’s room on the floor. I know I was definitely uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in a room by myself. Catherine and Jemma went back to their own rooms while Shannon, Jasmine and Izzy all stayed in Shannon’s. I didn’t really sleep much but I think I slept enough. I knew I wouldn’t sleep well anyway so I was prepared for that.

This morning we were up for 6:45am and I had to wake everyone up because nobody else got up on time. I went round knocking on doors. There was a walk of about 10 minutes with all of our luggage to the bus stop. The bus journey was about half an hour long and Chris had to pay for my fare because I only had a ten pound note. There was a mix up when the bus driver didn’t put it through twice so I had to ask for fare and he then told me Chris had already paid - despite the fact that he hadn’t put it through twice. Ugh. I’m so socially awkward… We then had to lug it all through Heathrow to Terminal 1. Once we’d checked in we hung around for a while, divided up money then went to get lunch. The flight was delayed so we all got quite bored trying to guess when our gate would appear. Once it did, we made our way to gate 50 and waited a bit before we could actually board the plane. I’m in 27C, though I was supposed to be in 27A but I swapped with Chris because I didn’t want the window seat. So far, Jacob has kept us amused and we’ve been laughing at random Croatian words such as “pet slaps” (five waterfalls) and the fact that he demanded I write “shpoon” in here. We’ve been laughing at his Top Gear alternative highway code. I’ve also been talking to a random woman whose daughter is doing a World Challenge to Ecuador next year. She kind of watched me writing then struck up a conversation when I paused. I also got a special vegetarian meal which is basically a weird salad - the woman who gave me it called me Rachel Eliza, which is also what my boarding pass says. Weird…