Chapter 1: Game Day

 4 am wakeup, 4:30 scheduled to leave the house, 7:00 boarded the aircraft, 7:30 take off, 12:45 landed (local time). An approximately 7 hour procedure is all it takes to completely throw myself into the deep end and upturn my life. The 7 hour journey which will become the norm from now on (anticipating that I might return home once in a while). 

The blindness of the night hung about, pierced by the glow of my digital boarding pass, headlights through the windscreen and the blue haze of the interior of the airport shuttle bus. I stared back at the spotlighted front door as we pulled away from the driveway, back at the memories of the summer's exits and entrances: the smiling faces of friends and family embraced at the step, the trudge from the car after a long shift, the exasperated knock following another countryside run. The faint glow of what once was, the experiences I leave behind with this journey yet carry with me as memories. 

The chill of the morning framed my breath as I climbed the stairs at the rear of the plane. Equipped with R.F. Kuang's Katabasis (a gift from a loved one), a compilation of Olivia Dean and Gracie Abrams' most bitter tunes and a pot of Pret's porridge, my journey across the sea began. Fog-coated pastures tinted by the morning sun were eventually replaced by islands rising up from a turquoise sea, pinched by the human hand.

With my parents as company and navigators beside me, the tiredness from the early wake up permitted me to repeatedly forget that this was not the usual family holiday. In a couple of days, I would be left to fend for myself, to make friends in this unfamiliar city, to make my own way into the centre, to overcome the loneliness, to eventually give up the friendly deception...