En Route Part 2: Melbourne Airport

Hi all!
Hopefully there's more than one of you reading it... as of now Dad's the only official follower (Hi Dad!). I am feeling a lot less chipper than the last time I wrote. I left my house to begin this journey at 1pm on 4 July EST. I believe it is now 5am on 6 July EST. That is 30 hours of travel. My final flight from Melbourne (Correct Pronunciation: MEL-Bun) to Launceston (Pronounced LAWN-Sess-Ton) has been delayed an hour. I'm lucky this is my first delay and it really will not have any effects on another flight. I feel bad for the person who the school sent to pick me up at the airport, but there really is nothing I can do about it. I'm sure there is some sort of board in Launceston that says the flight is delayed. Hopefully they won't leave without me. I don't have the energy to figure out how to get a cab.

SO what has happened since my last blog? I landed in Los Angeles. I checked in and all that good stuff. The security guy was saying how awfully cold it was down in Tasmania this time of year. At first I was scared because I really didn't think it would get that cold. I was reminded that this man lives in LA when he told me it was "really cold. Like San Francisco." I told him I'm from Boston. He quoted Ernest Hemingway saying "the coldest night I ever spent was a summer night in San Francisco." I was surprised that an airport security guard knew Hemingway quotes off the top of his head. Maybe he was an English major in college. Its hard to find a career in English, you know.

Flight from LA was an overnight to Auckland, New Zealand. The jet was HUGE. It was a 474 and it had something like 70 rows that were 9 across each. It even had an upstairs. I had the middle seat, but I was lucky enough to be in the first row of coach, and I had tons of extra leg room. I could stretch my legs out all the way sitting in my chair. The guy sitting to my right slept half the time and read half the time and didn't eat a single thing for the entire 12 hour flight. The guy sitting to my left became my buddy and we chatted on and off the whole flight. He is a 30-something software engineer from Hobart who owns a 40 foot sailboat. He gave me his card and told me if I was ever in the area I should bring a friend along and he'd take us out sailing on the Hobart Harbor on his boat. I said I'd email him. I still need to do some research before I jump on the boat of a relative stranger. It wouldn't be until it got nicer out anyways.

Eventually the plane landed. I didn't get to really see anything of New Zealand except what I could see from the airport terminal, but it still looked really pretty. I bought a shot glass to commemorate the joyous 5 hours I spent hanging around the airport. Who knows if I'll ever get back to Kiwiland? I hope I do though... it looks really beautiful and all of the people I encountered were very lovely. I also drank a lot of coffee, smoked duty-free cigarettes on the smokers deck, and enjoyed a half hour shoulder massage that only cost me $17 in USD. Wicked good deal after sleeping on a plane in coach.

Flight to Melbourne was longer than I expected (4 hours) but it was pretty good except for the bit of turbulence we hit for a couple minutes. I made another friend. This was a younger guy... a few years older from me. We talked for a few hours but I never even got his name. Good conversation though, and it made the time go by more quickly. Especially since it was a wicked ghetto plane that didn't even have tv monitors in the headrests.

All of my luggage made it to Melbourne. I saw when I had to recheck it after customs. Customs was a breeze. I had to fill out a little slip and tell them that I didn't bring any seeds or nuts or plants into the country. Their sniffer dog was some sort of beagle. Way too cute to be a drug sniffer dog. I think his job was to just sniff out contraband vegetation.

I've been sitting in this airport for hours and I am deliriously tired. This post probably makes no sense at all, but I think it makes it more authentic: true blogging after two days of travel. Will blog more when I get settled in my room and I sleep. Love! Cheers!