Wednesday, July 23rd at about 1:30 I left for my first flight, to Dallas, Texas. There, I texted my friend who lives in Texas and said, "I'm in Texas!" Twenty minutes later my next flight had started boarding and I texted again, this time, "Byebye Texas!"
I had a three hour-ish layover in San Francisco so I actually got to see my friend who lives in San Francisco, Donnie. I was really excited to get to leave the airport in California because I'd never been to California before. I left the airport, Donnie picked me up, and we went on this awesome playground. It had the biggest playground slide I had ever seen in my life. We slid down the slide and hid in a cracked egg. (It was a very strange playground.) There was a sign that said something like, "This park is due to the wonderful efforts of governor Arnold Schwarzenegger." That amazed me. I guess I just never fully could believe he was really the governor but a sign in a park doesn't lie! Then Donnie took me back to the airport but I almost missed my flight to Sydney because I get lost everywhere and of course got lost in the San Francisco airport.
But I didn't miss it, and soon I was greeted by an Australian flight attendant and was seated next to this Australian man who was covered in bandages all over his body. A little weird, but it did mean we got an extra seat in between us. I slept through dinner. When I woke up, the bandaged Australian man started a conversation with me. He showed me things on his map. He told me he flipped over his bike and that's why he was all bandaged. He offered to take me to a horse race in Melbourne, and he offered me some of his beer. He was really friendly, actually. And he kept asking the flight attendant for things, such as booze, ice-packs, a working tv screen. And he would always end his requests with "Thanks, mate!" It made me smile.
One of the flight attendants was in love with me. He said, "What's your name?" and I said "Aly" and he said "Haley?" and I said, "AH-ly" and he said "You're very pretty."
Then he started asking me questions such as why, when he put my breakfast on my tray I turned it around the other way (it was because I wanted to eat the fruit that was on the other side first, if you were curious), and he asked what I was doing in Australia, and what I was studying at Macquarie. When I told him creative writing he brought over a Writer's Digest magazine for me. Except that I had already read that issue. So I pretended to read for a few minutes because I appreciated the thought. Then I played checkers on the super high-tech TV screen on the back of the seat in front of me.
I also watched "Definitely, Maybe" which was cute, and "Drillbit Taylor" which was odd.
My flight got in at 6:02am, Friday the 25th. I waited at the airport for 45 minutes for the Macquarie person. When I finally found him, I was told to wait with a group of other kids, and we seriously waited there for 2 hours before the Macquarie representative acknowledged that there were enough of us to fill the van or something.
Then our bus driver was slow and I live in the village and we went there last so I spent another 3 and a half hours in that van! I wanted to be super excited but I was very tired and grumpy and hungry. And there was a really REALLY perky girl on the bus. OBNOXIOUSLY PERKY! She was like "OMG I love accents! They just make me so happy! Say it again, Lithuanian boy! Or is it Lithuanianism? OMG i hope my roommates aren't boring! i want to party! I'm so nervous that they will be boring!"
Then when I finally got to my room I felt sad because I was in my room and it was an empty room and an empty bathroom in an empty apartment because nobody was around and I didn't even have internet yet. So then I was like poo I can't handle this I want to go home. (for a brief second)
Then I got my internet working and listened to I'm From Barcelona's HAPPY HAPPY music and all was well again. I went to a convience store that miraculously had soymilk and thumbtacks, both of which I wanted. And then I was happy and excited for what was to come!
