Leavin on a jet plane...

I’m in the US! Sitting here waiting in LAX, anxious to get home. This airport doesn’t give a very welcome home feeling - now that I’m in the same hemisphere I just want to be home. Soon enough. I’m sad and tired and not impressed with America. But hopefully that will change soon. I’ve been up for 22 hours and only slept an hour or so on the plane ride here, and I’ve got another 8 hours til I’m home! I don’t feel like recapping my travels the past two weeks at the moment, so I think that post will have to wait a few days. Maybe this will be a reflection, more emotional, since that’s how my mind is currently working. Although I could also include the past few days. I think I need food and a bed. I apologise in advance if my grammar is poor or I don’t make sense, forgive me.

So I got back to Melbourne on Wednesday, July 4. My flight from Canberra was delayed by an hour so that wasn’t too fun, but no biggie. I got into the city and checked into our hotel by 12 or 1 I think. Then I headed to Elizabeth St for some quick lunch and stopped by the Immigration Museum on my walk back. It was free for concession so I checked it out. The guy seemed weary of me having concession, but I showed him all my cards! The museum wasn’t that cool really, I wasn’t too interested I guess. It’s in the old Customs building though and that was a pretty cool building. I came back and waited in the hotel for the others to come. Jared picked up Loretta and her sister Martha from the airport and brought them in. I came out and we carried all our luggage in, that was fun, especially with our small room. It was so nice to have a real hotel room, especially with our own bathroom, a real treat! We headed out to happy hour at the Hard Rock Café as soon as we got settled. We just ordered drinks for a couple hours and talked and whatnot, it was a great time. We walked back toward the hotel, practically the entire central business district, and stopped for food at Lord of the Fries, yum! Jono came in on the train and was waiting in the hotel when we got back. We all just hung out in the boys’ hotel room for awhile before bed. The next morning we slept a little bit and repacked all our stuff for the trip home from our travelling. We didn’t have a specific plan for the day, but had some ideas. Our first stop was lunch at this café that had fish and chips, one last time before we left, and it was great! We went over to the Eureka tower, the tallest building, to go up to the top. They have the observation deck, but also this thing that’s all glass that sticks out over the edge and it’s opaque until you get over the edge then turns clear. Well for some reason that part was closed that day and we didn’t care as much to go up in it just to see, as Loretta and I have already done that in the Rialto towers. So we needed a Plan B. The boys wanted to check out the Crown Casino, so we walked all through in there without spending a dime. Then what to do. We weren’t sure, but thought we’d check out the IMAX. It was across the city, and had nothing good playing in the afternoon. So we wandered upstairs from the theatre to the Melbourne Museum, it was free for concession, but not adults. Martha was an adult and we didn’t think it would be worth paying to go in for her, so we left. Then we headed to the Aquarium across the city again and went in there. I had been there, but it was good. I enjoyed that and so did everyone else, even Jono who is scared of fish! After a couple hours there we headed back to the hotel to relax a bit and get ready for the evening. Jono had to catch the train home around 6, so we said goodbye to him at the corner 7-11, that was a difficult goodbye for us. Then we left for dinner at the Hard Rock Café and met Loretta‘s friend Elissa there. We got there in time for a couple happy hour drinks before dinner and then had a nice dinner. It was Loretta’s birthday, that’s why we went out nice and such. We made a reservation and so they put balloons on our table for her! They brought her an ice cream sundae for dessert with a candle and made her stand up and we all sang for her, good stuff. The Australian way of singing Happy Birthday is better than ours I reckon, they add hip hip, hooray three times at the end. We were going to take the free tram back rather than walk, but it didn’t come after half an hour so we decided to walk. There was some crazy girl walking around who must have been on drugs or something and yelled at us, it was strange. Elissa was shocked, she said she’s never seen someone like that in Melbourne, she’s from here, or there I guess I should say now. Anyway, interesting little bit there. So we walked home and relaxed and got ready for the morning and leaving before heading to bed. I had trouble getting to sleep because I had so much on my mind with leaving and coming home and such. I did eventually though.

This morning we woke up at 5:30am Melbourne time. We got ready and loaded our luggage into Jared’s car and were off to the airport, one last view of Melbourne. It was pretty sad. We got there in plenty of time and so waited for Jenny to arrive and check in. We found out that she was actually on a different flight than us to LAX, she was stopping in New Zealand first. But her and I are on the same flight back to KC. So Jared couldn’t go past the silver doors there so we waited for awhile. Then we had to say goodbye to him. That was a rough one as well, but made better by the fact that he’s coming to California in January for a year, yay! We went through customs and I got stopped and asked to weigh my carry on. They care what it weighs over there. It was definitely over, but I still had tears in my eyes so that helped, he let me go with it after a few minutes. So we got to our gate and each got a muffin for breakfast, I used the internet kiosk real quick and we were about ready to board then. They boarded us super fast which was impressive since that plane is sooooo huge! I was lucky with my seat, I was one away from the emergency exit and in the aisle, with a guy in the window seat but nobody between us. That made the 14 hour flight so much better since we could spread out a bit. I watched four and a half movies, and a couple TV shows as well as listened to a couple different CD’s. I fell asleep for an hour, maybe two, a little over half way through the flight. They fed us lunch when we got up in the air and it was actually pretty good. Then they gave us our snack packs and a couple times they walked around with juice for us. It was good service really. They served us breakfast before we started our landing and that was nice as well. Everything went well and we got off pretty quickly. We had to collect our baggage and take it through customs, although they didn’t do anything to it or check it at all. We just had to drop it in an area for the appropriate flight we were connecting to. Going through customs I had to answer that I was bringing in chocolate and stuff as the food. Then the second guy asked me how long I was out of the country and I said five months. He looked at me and said “Five months?! What were you doing gone for that long?” I told him I was studying and he just gave me this horrible look. He seemed to think it suspicious I was gone that long I guess. He asked why I was studying and what I studied. It was sort of like, have you never heard of people studying abroad buddy, it’s quite normal! He even made me show him my id card from uni, even though it doesn’t say anything on it and he doesn’t know anything about that anyway. I understand they have to ask questions, but who am I? I just studied in a different country, and he was so rude about it all, like I had done something wrong. It’s not a good way to come back into the country. The LA airport is not a friendly place. It makes me miss Australia. Plus, it’s so intimidating with all the intense security around here, it’s crazy compared to what I got used to over there! And it’s even worse than when I left here actually. They had to search through my bag and I felt a little violated, like the girl went through absolutely everything. She had a long look at my big block of chocolate as well, like it was hiding something, I’m like, it’s just chocolate! Anyway, just extra frustrating when you’re tired and sad and such. Makes me wonder though, it intimidates me who would never do anything, but to someone who would do something, would they really be intimidated enough by it? I don’t know, kinda strange the whole security issue, are they doing it as efficiently as possible. It all seems fairly unorganized and rushed as well. I guess I’ve just gotten so used to something different. I already miss the more relaxed lifestyle of Australia! I’ll just have to make it for myself. I really can’t wait to get home home now. That should be excellent.

And I know this is really short, but I think that is all for this post. I still have ones planned in my head sort of. I need to write on all of my travels the last two weeks. I also wanted to do more of a reflection on what I’ve learned and picked up and how I’ve changed and things of that sort, bring it all together. Anyway, they may take awhile as I’m adjusting to being back in the land of the free, but they will come. I have incredible mixed emotions now so forgive me. I am really excited to be home for different reasons, but I’m also terribly sad to not be in Australia still, it’s incredibly bittersweet. So with that, I am going to go change and clean myself up for the last leg of the journey home and get some food in my belly. I can’t find great quotes for the moment, so I will leave one that sort of suits. I shall see you soon!

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can. ~Danny Kaye

Love always, Alissa