A Crash Landing

If you have ever traveled, you will understand my frustration with how my transportation turned out. I was sad, mad, loved, hurt, afraid, excited, anxious, sleepy, quirky, and cranky all within 24 hours.

Backtrack here:

It was Wednesday the 18th and I had spent the whole morning crying, the whole afternoon running around to see my family, and the early evening stressing out about how heavy my bags were and how incredibly late I was to the airport. Let me chronicle my trip for you using bullets so I don't get riled up at the details.

• I get to the airport at 5:40pm, my flight leaves at 6:05pm. Awesome.
• My bags are too heavy even though I had frantically taken half the stuff out of them 20 minutes earlier. Also awesome.
• I barely get to the gate in time and I am so happy to be there that I actually enjoy my flight from Sacramento to LA.
• In LA, I am supposed to transfer to Quantas through the international terminal and head to my gate to meet up with some other students. I have NO idea where my gate is and after 2 or 3 "lost in translation" moments I finally find out where I am going.
• On the way to my gate with my stuff I run into Tiffany. Tiffany is a blond, sorority loving, booze hound with a great sense of humor and attitude to spare. Let's be friends. :)
• We end up having martini's and talking about where we're from and why we're going to Australia. It was so nice to make a friend to travel with.
• We board the plane around midnight, but it's really late arriving. I'm exhausted (physically and mentally) and just want to sit down and sleep.
• I don't sleep on the plane. I went on a 14 hour flight to Sydney in the middle of the night, next to a very odd woman, running on 6 hours of sleep, getting none on the plane, only to end up missing my connecting flight out of Sydney and into Brisbane.
• Like I said, I missed my flight, and instead of going on the 10:45am flight to Brisbane I ended up on the 3pm flight in the airport by myself until a group of us girls gravitated towards each other again.
• On the way to Brisbane I thought we were going to drop out of the air. There was mad turbulence. At one point, I ended up jumping really hard and grabbing the arm of the 40-something businessman sitting next to me. It was awkwardly hilarious to say the least and he made fun of me the rest of the way down.
• Once on the ground, we sat for about 20 minutes waiting for a storm to pass because they couldn't pull out the loading dock for fear of lightening strikes.
• We got off the plane and got our luggage only to find that it was completely soaked through with rain water from the storm outside. Mildewed luggage is a pain in the butt. (It could have been worse though, our friend Brittney didn't even get her bags.)
• We got out bags and waited another half an hour for Keith, the nicest little Aussie man, to pick us up and take us to the Gold Coast.
• It took 2 hours in rush hour traffic to get to where we needed to go 40 miles away.
• Once at our hostel, I found out that my reservations had been somehow revoked (they claimed I did it) and that I didn't have a room. Hello Brittney's floor...

So, now here I am a few days later looking back on what could possibly be the most stressful experience of my entire life. I can't believe I am here. A rocky landing like that could crush you. I am happy to be here though. I just needed a lot of support (thanks Jordan) and a lot of time in the sun. Now that I've crashed here, it's time to enter the Wonderful World of Aus....