Touchdown In Los Angeles

Check it out, it's 6 something in the morning and I am awake! Not too bad when you consider that I usually wake around that time at home for work and it's actually 1:52am, so my laptop tells me.

Finally we made it to the USA. The last few days have been a blur. Quite literally. I know at some point we spent our last night in our unit, cleaned and bit and spent some time smelling like chlorine. I can't tell you now, the excitement the man shows in the Easy Off Bam commercial, it's all fake. I had no where near the same amount of joy from that product. False advertising if you ask me.

This brings us to shifting to my aunt and uncles for the last three nights. Yet more of a blur of re-packing, little sleep and lots of details. My car was handed over to my brother (sniff sniff, I'll miss you babe, you've been so great to me) and we had moments of wonder just how much we'd pay for excess baggage. Soul Mama's on Saturday was somewhat disappointing in the sense that many people were coming, but not many actually did. If I am honest, that seems to be the story of my life! I have to admit that I can't actually be disappointed, in the past two years here I really haven't settled too much back into life here and thus don't have a social following as such. Point is that it was yet another confirmation that the big heave -ho overseas is a right choice to make.

Yesterday, Sunday, seemed to go on forever. Which is probably correct because it probably lasted something like 40 hours. I can't do that maths right now. Our flight was late because the Qantas engineers had found an issue with the seal on the door so we didn't board until 1:30 when we were actually supposed to take off at 12:10. Personally, I didn't have an issue. I'm glad they found the problem on the ground before we had to take off. I still maintain that they're a safe airline, no one has died yet and planes have been landed safely. And they're service is still perfectly fine.

And so the 14 hours and 20 minute journey across the ocean began. Oh. My. God. It was long. I had back pain and couldn't sleep which is something I haven't been getting a lot of lately so it was just all bad. I felt like it was going forever!! However, I managed to squeeze in three screenings of I Want To Believe (Squee!!!) plus some Simpsons, Are You Being Served, some CSI and the start of Wanted, which lost my attention about 40 minutes in. Oh wells. Thus, we landed!

My past experiences going through LAX have mostly consisted of blurs trying to catch connecting flight, having me stressed out in the immigration line because I'm running very late. However, as that pain in the butt Murphy would have it, I had no connecting flight, thus the process of going through immigration, collecting bags, clearing customs and leaving the airport was done in one hour. Typical!

We had a lot of luggage. Four checked bags ranging from smallest to largest, weighting 17kg, 21kg, 25.6kg and 31.7kg. Thank goodness for combining weight between bags!! Plus being ladies, we had a 'hangbag' each, plus a jacket, then a backpack each, I had my pillow and Erin had the Laptop bag. Needless to say we had a lot for two people to carry. But we made it!

Los Angeles was like landing back in Melbourne on an overcast but humid day. Seriously. Lots of cars, loud people and take out places. Even now the traffic going past is kinda heavy.

Erin is waiting for me to breakdown and cry. She won't accept the fact that I'm likely not to, not in the way she is expecting me to. I don't feel like crying because in the grand scheme of things, I'm not sad about leaving Australia. Partly because I've done it before (so in theory I'm good for the next 17 months!) and partly because I feel this is the best choice for me. As I said, I really haven't settled in the two years being back at home. Yes, there are a small group of people I will miss, but the world is a lot smaller than most people think it is. And with technology these days, its smaller still.