One thing I should say in advance, before diving into the story, in the words of Tim Moore: "There are two stories about what it's like to climb Kilimanjaro: the one people tell their friends after they get home, which has the benefit of inspiring others to tackle the world's highest free-standing mountain, and the one they tell each other at the summit, which has the benefit of being true." - This one will be the latter

Wake up at 6, steal toiletpaper for the climb, where I was staying at and get a quick breakfast in before checking out was my morning before the flight -> Heathrow at 8:30.
I was meeting most people for the first time, Alberto, Claire, Alex and me hung out at the airport, speculating about everything we might have forgotten or what could go wrong, starting from loosing your passport to dieing from altitude sickness via pooping your pants or having hallucinations; I, who had to cancel the plan to pop a 125ml bottle of champagne at the peak, after being told that I wont be able to open a bottle in the state I will be in when arriving, came to the conclusion the less I know, the less worried I would be; not the best one, but it was going to be an adventure anyways and now it was too late to do anything about it. Also, Claire had a huge bag of medicines, first aid kits etc. and was basically a walking pharmacy, looked like she could care for all of us so I thought we should be fine...

Next up was the flight to Tanzania via Istanbul with an 80 minute layover and a delay, meaning we arrived when boarding started, but made it with a bit of a heartbeat (not going to be the last time this trip) ... good movies, Food, Alex and Alberto made the flights go by quick, so before even realising, we had made it through passport and Visa control. Here the ~30 pens I took to give to local kids came in handy, because there was only one pen at the airport for a whole plane to fill out their details so I handed all of them out to tourists (but got them back).

Fun Fact: if you arrive in Moshi Airport, you leave the plane and just walk across the rolling field without safety towards a small building which you hope to be the airport.

The shuttle/Bus was already waiting and with all our bags "securely" strapped on the roof we had a ~2h drive ahead of us across organ-realigning potholes and speedbumps. We arrived at 3am at the hotel in Moshi and all fell into our beds immediately after check in.

I slept until mid-day and after breakfast we had planned a Trip to Moshi to see the market etc. with 20 people in a 7 seater van.
As soon as we made it to town, we got mobbed by local sellers with paintings from "local artists". Stupid me, for the first time in Tanzania, "bargained" 2 for 10$ each with elephants and a dancing Masai for presents for which they initially wanted 55$ each (one made with dried banana which I still think is super cool!) and I thought my undeniable economic talent has again been on display and I made a super good deal, only to find out it hasn't been a "local price" -"I give you student discount" price - "support local community" price, as they kept telling me, but a total rip-off and they order them online for 50p each and none of the paintings were originals and after some time you knew all the motives that were possible and every seller had the same pictures/copies.

Back at the Hotel we got a Briefing for the Climb with the only 3 things I remember were:
Firstly, if you can not count to 10 anymore you have to go down because of water in your brain, and you could die.
Secondly, if you spit or cough blood you would have to go down because of water in your lungs and you could die.
Lastly, "It is called choose-a-challenge not choose-a-holiday"!
However, after the main Guides introduced themselves I was not so worried anymore with Kilian (the main guide) having climbed the mountain in 16h for fun once and over 209 times in 11 years!