Long flights and lost things...

Today did not start off well. As someone who likes to plan, organize and have the details pinned down (according to the ISTJ Meyers-Briggs personality test), I stress out when things don't go according to plan. Some friends brought by coffee and offered to give us a ride down to where we were going to meet the rest of the students going to Australia. We packed our luggage into their car and started to head out. I went to grab my things and realized that I didn't have my wallet and it was no where in sight. I frantically looked and looked until the clock hit 5am and the team had to head out, they couldn't wait for me. I retraced my steps and found nothing. I started getting really worried that I wasn't going to be going to Australia after all. I called around to everyone I could think of who might know where it was until finally hearing back from a friend who found it in the back of his car. My friend's sister rushed me over to SPU to pick it up and then continuing to the airport. I got there and waited in the Hawaiian airlines check-in counter for what felt like an eternity. We cleared security and were headed to Sydney with a layover in Honolulu.


It was my first time to Hawaii and although I barely spent any time there at all, I liked it. It was a nice 85° and sunny. A few of us ran around the airport until it came time to board for Sydney. We got on the plane and it wasn't even booked up to 50% full. We looked around an saw that there were whole rows that weren't being used so along with many others, I used this a makeshift bed to endure the ten hour flight Down Under.



Nick and I were getting treated pretty dang well by our Hawaiian flight attendent, Sheila. Ironic, huh? We're headed to Australia and our flight attendent has a name like that. She spoiled us -- from slipping us a second can of pineapple juice, mixing up crazy-good drinks (non-alcoholic of course) to walking by and throwing orchids on my lap. Yeah.. this was an odd moment for me, too. We would laugh each time the attendents would speak to the crowd, seemingly ending every thought with mahalo, Hawaiian for 'thank you'.



After 48 played songs on my iPod, three episodes of Lost, five pages of journaling and endless amounts of cranberry juice with tonic water, I am now sitting at a desk in my temporary dorm room in Sydney. It's now 11:42 pm local time in Sydney, but I feel like the 6:43am of back home. Up at 7am for orientation and an adventure in the city. Although 15+ hours flying wasn't my favorite thing to do, the sunset flying into Sydney made it all worth it.