34 Hours Later...

The flight was definitely not short.  My flight was from Greenville to Dallas, Dallas to Sydney, Sydney to Perth. The longest leg was about 16 hours. I had an isle seat the whole time and was lucky to have a girl next to me that was an american who had been living in Sydney for 3 years.  She gave me a lot of great advice and we actually had great conversation over endless bottles of wine.

Here are some pictures:

 My Mom, brothers, and niece sending me off at the airport.

Waiting on my flight to Sydney.

It was a great flight until...

I had to go through immigration to get my passport stamped (which is my favorite thing about traveling), collect my bags, then go through customs.

People are vicious when it comes to getting their bags and getting in line first.  I was by myself with a 40 pound carry on and two 50 pound bag duffles.  I had to get a cart and find my bags on the baggage claim that had over 2000 other bags!  After about 20 minutes of finding my bag and struggling I fall in line to go through customs.  I am zig zagging through the line, feeling rushed and then all of a sudden my bags fall on the ground.  I have an asian business man behind me and an indian man in front of me.  Guess who helps me? NEITHER! The asian business man straight up KICKS my bags to get out of his way and cuts in front of me!! I was shocked! The Indian man looks at me, giggles and walks on.  I had three Aussie boys come  to my rescue and call the guys buggas for not helping me!

I finally get through customs and they checked everything in my duffels! They inspected everything from my shoes to the pack of almonds I had. They were really nice about everything but asking all types of questions.  The guy who was checking my bag told me not to put "pacific islander" on my Australian documents. He said, "You aren't, you are "American"".  That's a first for me. From now on I have to put American not what I actually am.  Weird.

Finally, I get on the plane to Perth.  The flight was 5 hours long.  Everything was fine.  Had brekkie (what they call breakfast) with mimosas and watched Hall Pass.  We were fixing to land when a guy two rows up from me gets up and takes his backpack to the bathroom.  10 minutes later the seatbelt sign comes on and the guy is still not out of the bathroom.  The flight attendants are knocking on the door and then they check his seat and they find a liter of vodka almost gone.  They then think he is either passed out in the bathroom or puking.  The pilot had no choice but to stay in the air.  We were supposed to land at 1:02 and it was already 1:15. The guy finally comes out of the bathroom like nothing is wrong with one of those non-smoke cigarettes in his hand.  He basically got drunk on the morning flight and wanted to finish up the flight with a smoke. He was removed first off the flight and not sure what happened to him.

Phew, that was my flight.

As soon as the plane landed, I got off as soon as I could! I couldn't wait to see Merrick.  I had major butterflies in my stomach.  I felt like I was seeing him for the first time.  When I did finally see him, he had a huge smile on his face, flowers in one hand, and waving as hard as he could with the other. I felt like I was home!

This is what he had for me when we got home.