Day 1 After taking heaps of flights from Brisbane, Darwin, Singapore and Turkey we finally arrived in Ukraine. We met our caretaker who took us straight to our hotel before setting off to explore the country before the competition started the next day. My first impression of Ukraine was that it was quite gloomy and grey. We had a great time sight seeing, eating Ukrainian food and just having fun together before the competition started.
Day 2 We got up early to meet all the other teams staying at the hotel before going to the competition’s opening ceremony. We met a lot of people from different parts of the world. We also became friendly rivals with Angola somehow and became besties with Mexico and Spain. At the opening ceremony we met with all teams and proudly held up the Australian flag. At the ceremony we were put into our pools for the semi-finals, which made me realise that it was time to prepare for the competition the next day.
Day 3 Competition day. As soon as we arrived at the competition venue, we were ready to do our best. All teams set up their own tables and the semi-finals began. We followed the same process we used in the Australian National Finals and were doing well to begin with. However our team began to experience different opinions and views and resulted in some arguments occurring. This brought tension to the group and we lost our team momentum. In the end we were not very confident in making it into the finals. That night we celebrated with our friends from Spain and Mexico who made it into the finals and partied our loss away with all the teams in the competition.
Day 4 Shopping day. As we didn’t make it into the finals we had a free day to do whatever we wanted so the girls all went shopping together for the whole day. That night was the closing ceremony where the winners were announced. The ceremony was amazing! There were dancers and delicious food. We had a great night with all our new friends and celebrated this great experience together. The winners were finally announced and Ukraine had won! To celebrate, Mexico started shoving tequila down our throats. We then moved on to a pub where they stuffed us with more alcohol.
Day 5 We went to bed early because we all had early flights. I took the chance to go to Paris with one of the girls for 5 days. Whilst this was my first time in Europe, the other three also went to Rome to begin their European adventure aswell.
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