3:37 Mid Sunday Afternoon   The Edge of America Industrialised Nations are not always awesome. but hey, welcome home, Teresa. Welcome home. Here is what I wrote in Nadi Airport/on the Nadi - LAX flight. It's kinda a different entry: 7:06 Late Sunday Evening   Swallowed Tears Leaving is always really hard. Especially when you are a stupid, confused little girl. I thought i had 23 kg TOTAL for checked luggage, but i was allowed 23 kg for each of 2 checked bags. ARgharghargh. so about 10 minutes before I had to leave i was frantically trying to free my luggage of stuff to get my entire allowance down to what I thought it was. So dumb. Grarh. So I could have taken twice what i did. ah well...more incentive for caleb to come to america...to deliver me my stuff! shipping is expensive you see... Ah well. The guy at international security asked me where I was from after I asked him if I needed to take my laptop out. I said Utah, and he said, "me too! I went to school there." And as you can probably work out from me even bothering to mention it, he went to USU. I said, "no way, i'm an aggie too!" it was cool. What a small world. That's almost as weird as the group of youngish kids going from SLC to New Zealand on all the same flights as me back in December. I bought new shoes because my old ones were falling apart and sometimes had a powdery mildew substance on them...i didn't want to risk it in customs and be shoeless in LA so I bought school shoes like my old ones from Riccarton High. Caleb warned me, but did I listen? no. I couldn't remember my old shoes giving me such horrible blisters, but these are nasty on the backs of my feet. waaah. I am walking like a gimp. I am walking really weirdly and that must be an amusing sight to behold because I am severely pigeon-toed. I really should listen to Caleb when he makes a suggestion because we both know he's the more intelligent out of the two of us. On the flight from Christchurch to Nadi, I sat next to a very nice Indian man. There were also screaming children all over the place, to whom I attribute the headache I currently have. Lunch was good - some pumpkin salad thing, a roll, and rice w/lentil curry stuff, which I accompanied with a nice gin and tomato juice. I love Air Pacific. They have been consistently good at hospitality and friendliness. They made efforts to get me vegetarian meal even on the really short notice I gave them on my last flight. Air New Zealand is kinda...so so. I've had some really good Air NZ flights, but I've had some pretty mediocre ones as well. Same with Qantas. Anyway. Security and check in at Nadi airport was very painless. I forgot to take my belt off the first time I went through, which set off the detector, and then i accidentally bumped into the detector which set it off the second time through...but i finally made it. heh. kinda embarrassing but still quite quick. No one was waiting on me, so that was good. The Duty Free guy at the Fiji duty free store said I could take rum into America despite me not being 21. I hope he's right. Dad would love some for father's day. but i'm not entirely sure which kind he likes so I guessed and bought some dark rum. Everything is going to be different at home. 6 months is a long time to leave your parents when you're still a dependent, and 7000 miles is a long way from home. While I've been gone, mi familia has ripped up the carpet in the dining room and great room and replaced it with some laminate wood-looking stuff, like what's in our kitchen. I'm kinda excited, i'm sure it will be a lot nicer to clean. They also got new dishes and silverware for reasons unbeknownst to me. And according to Chelsea, they cleaned my room while I was gone. I wasn't sure if I should be horrified or elated...ah well, if they threw anything out, I either won't notice or won't care (hopefully), and this way dad will probably have forgotten to yell at me about whatever he inevitably got angry about whilst cleaning it. hahaha. BWAHAHAHAHAHA. yes... moving on. I think I'll get something to drink and then watch a movie or something. I wish I had something more exciting to say, but all I can really think about is how incredibly emotionally fragile I am. I will cry at anything, but not too long or too deeply. Perhaps once I'm home I'll lock myself in the bathroom, have a nice long bath, and sob to my heart's content. Sob for a lack of best friend, sob for a lack of interesting people, sob for a lack of things to do, sob for all the pathetic little reasons that I truly did not want to leave christchurch. etc. The end. i guess. Maybe something eventful will happen and I'll write about it. Currently i'm kinda boring myself. There is a pair of really little kids running around playing with toys. one has a toy car, and one has a toy thomas the tank engine. Which makes me think of Caleb because he loves Thomas the Tank Engine. SIGH. I'm LEAVING now. ----------------- 6:25 a.m. I am typing from the plane. I think we're about an hour and a half from landing. I think this flight is supposed to be 10 hours. That means I got maybe 5? hours of low-quality sleep. The man I'm sharing this trio of seats with is a Californian who manages a volunteering thing, where uni students can volunteer overseas for two weeks and then go adventuring for the next two weeks. something like that anyway. He's kind, he gave me his fruit in exchange for my tim tam things at dinner last night. He sits in the aisle seat whereas I have the window, so there is a lot of space. Space on these cramped flights is a very, very precious commodity. I got to stretch out a tiny wee bit while I attempted to sleep, which was good. On planes, my favourite method of having naps is by sitting forward and using the tray table as a platform on which to rest my head. It worked really well on the Christchurch to Nadi flight, but on these long 747 flights, I seem always to be in front of a large person who blocks my seat going backwards, and just behind a small child who puts the seat back all the way. It's almost endearing, if it weren't such a tight fit for me. I called Air Pacific from Christchurch about a week and a half to two weeks ago. I made sure my flights were still at the same time and I ordered a vegetarian meal option for all of my Air Pacific flights. This order can't have gotten through, somehow, because while the flight attendants readily accommodated my needs on the CHC - NAD flight, it was much more difficult to get a vegetarian dinner last night. The flight attendant serving me told me that if I had put in a request for vegetarian meals, I would have a stamp on my boarding pass for special meals. That was rather disappointing, but as I mentioned earlier, the person I am sitting next to let me have his fruit, which was very kind of him. About 10 minutes later, the flight attendant came back bearing a vegetarian hot dish that she had found left over. I was astonished that she remembered (also as i mentioned before, these flights are very packed) and incredibly grateful. It was a nice meal. She remembered me for breakfast this morning, too. Astounding! She didn't fetch me a vegetarian dish but she did let me know that the only meat was a chicken sausage set to one side. Barring the sausage, breakfast was quite nice. I actually like the omelettes we get on planes. the hashbrown wasn't too bad and I liked the corn. The watermelon in the fruit dish was beautiful with a delicate flavour and full of juice. Yummy! I can't get my remote control for the personal tv thing to work very well. It appears as though somehow someone has managed to chew on the buttons. It's amazing. I don't mind too terribly, though, because since the child in front of me has his seat all the way back, i can't get the tv at a viewable angle anyway. The sight of the clouds floating carefree in the atmosphere with spots of blue Pacific ocean scattered here and there where the clouds don't meet was a beautiful sight to wake up to this morning. I love the window seat. The aisle seat is convenient but i love watching the clouds change beneath us. Sigh, now the child in front of me is doing something to make the back of the seat wobble and shake. It keeps hitting the top of my laptop. Taking small children on long-haul flights must be really hard and scary. I'm scared enough as it is trying to keep track of myself and my own things, let alone being wholly responsible for another traveller's well being. Props to moms, dads, and other people who brave the risks of having angry passengers annoyed at their screaming progeny. I noticed on the CHC-NAD flight that the most screams from children happened when the pressure changed. takeoff and landing. Of course there were lots of screamfests between, but the majour choruses of all the wee babies screaming at once were, I think, taking off and landing. Which is absolutely fair enough because I, myself, have felt like screaming during such times. For instance, last July when I was returning to America from a month's visit in Christchurch -- On the Christchurch - Auckland leg of my journey, I got an intense pain in my nose and cheeks and ears, presumably from either too much pressure in my sinuses or too little. It was awful. every breath was sheer pain and every tiny change in pressure was like someone stabbing me in the face. So, little ones who scream during takeoff and landing, I understand. Ah, slightly less than an hour to go at this point, what bliss. soon i'll be done travelling and I'll get to see my parents and sister again. It's good to know that someone misses you when you're gone. even if I do feel like crying whenever I think of Caleb. I think i'll play some pinball now to pass the time.