It's happening. I'm actually here. The
other side of the world was just a few plane trips away. And yes I'm
alive, and yes, this place is UNREAL!
I'll guess I'll start with the flights.
So I woke up at 7:30 am on Monday the 17th, got the the
airport for my shuttle at 8:45. The shuttle arrived, said goodbye to
my parents, and met a girl who was also going to Australia. (This is
a common theme, apparently almost everyone going on study abroad were
leaving that day.) We talked about everything. And then before I knew
it we were in JFK and arrived at our terminal. It was 1:30 when we
had arrived and we were all set to get our bags checked and to go
through security, but we had found out that the counter didn't open
till 2:45. Cue boring montage of us just sitting outside the
bathrooms till 2:45.
Finally 2:45 came and we got our bags
checked, mine biggest one was 21.8kg, just .2 under the limit, thank
the gods! Security was fine, then we waited some more, I watched
Megamind. Fantastically underrated film btw. Then 6:45 came and we
were boarding. I was on a flight to LAX, the first stop before the
long haul to Melbourne. The only interesting part of that flight was
that I had two empty seats next to me, no one was there! Score! So
that part ended, got to LAX, first went the wrong way to the gate and
then sat for another hour and a half, my flight to Melbourne wasn't
until 11:30 pm PST. So I was listening and watching all the people,
and then you see all these college students, and they all are
studying abroad, and it's all through Arcadia.
So I get seated on the flight and there
are 2 girls and a guy that are also in my row. We all start talking
because Rob says, “I'm pretty sure everyone in these few rows are
with Arcadia.” And he was 100% right. The girls introduced
themselves as Tory and shoot now I'm spacing on her name, but she was
an Aussie from Adelaide, heading home from 3 weeks of skiing and
touring America. She was telling us all about what we need to see in
Australia, like Bondi Beach and Byron Bay are musts apparently! And
she was just really awesome and it made me even more excited for
these months ahead.
Now the flight itself was long. It
seems like forever while you're on it, then all of a sudden you're
off and have to go through customs. I tried to stay up for as long as
I could, to avoid jet lag as much as possible, but I was out within 2
hours. Now the flight was going to be 14 hours and 30 minutes long.
And the captain told us that this was fast, and once we had gotten to
the end, he said we were 40 minutes early. So in a matter of
speaking, we were actually flying.
This flight was a bit of up and down,
and no not just from turbulence. Every time I went to sleep I would
wake up expecting a lot of time to have passed to only look at the
monitor and see that there were 11 and a half hours to go. This
happened all the time until we were half way through. Tory was kind
enough to give me both Benedryl and Advil, a few minutes later, I was
out; and I didn't wake up until there were 2 and a half hours left
and it was 7 am Melbourne time. I was out cold, Rob tried to wake me
up the use the bathroom, but ended up just climbing over me, and I
didn't even know till he told me after I woke up. Yeah it was a good
sleep.
Got off the plane, went through customs
which was super easy, then just got my luggage, told them I had
nothing to declare, and I was out. I was actually in Australia. And
the first thing I saw when I stepped outside was the sunshine. THE
SUN! Going from negative degrees back home to this is just amazing!
So warm, and it was a mild day, which I am very thankful for. All I
needed was to get out of the jeans I had been wearing since 8 am 2
days ago, yeah I time traveled in a plane, kind of a big deal.
I was just so ready to go. And I am
just so excited for the next few days in Melbourne and Sorrento! I'll
post another blog with those few days on it as soon as I can! And
just as an FYI, it's already becoming my favorite place, the
beaches... alright well I'll talk to you later, it's breakfast time!
xxo
Christina
No comments:
Post a Comment