IELTS | Talk About A Time When You Had To Wake Up Early

IELTS CUE CARD ANSWER | Talk about a time when you had to wake up early
Just last week I had to wake up earlier than normal, much earlier in fact, and it was quite an experience. I had agreed to give my friend a ride to the airport, which is about 45 minutes away from where we live.
She was going to a conference in another country and for some reason the flight departure was some ridiculous hour like 6am and because it was an international flight she had to check in well in advance of the departure time. So this meant that we had to get up around 3am in the morning.
Normally, if she was going to fly to the capital or elsewhere within the country she would just leave her own car at the airport and then collect it on her return. But this time she was going to be gone for almost a week in total.
So we decided it was probably best that I gave her a ride rather than leaving her car in the airport parking, and then I would collect her again when she returned.
Getting up at 3am was no joke – I mean I usually wake up quite early, around 6am, but even though I tried to go to sleep early the night before, I just couldn’t get off to sleep – it must have been the change in routine, you know how your body has a sort of rhythm and my body just didn’t want to sleep, my mind was still active and I found myself tossing and turning in bed for hours.
Eventually I did drop off – but when the alarm went off I couldn’t believe it. It felt like I had just gone to sleep a few minutes ago. I felt really sleepy still, and it was really difficult to get out of bed as I just wanted to roll over and go back to sleep again.
But I knew I had to get up and get going because my friend was counting on me. So I struggled to get out of bed and went to the kitchen and made myself some very strong coffee, stronger than normal – that really helped wake me up and then I had a quick shower and got dressed and set off to pick up my friend.
Thankfully the traffic was almost non-existent at that time in the morning and the trip to her house and then on to the airport was really quick. We got there in plenty of time and I said goodbye to her as she went to check in.
Follow up question: Do you think that people generally wake up later nowadays? Why do you think that?

I suppose some people might, but others not. I mean, there are some jobs which require that people start work early or work shifts so there have always been people getting up early – just the same as before, but then I guess that as people seem to be working more than in the past in general, it could be true that people are generally waking up earlier than in the past.

Good luck with your IELTS speaking test!