Travel Day 1

10:40am NZ Time
Plane to Auzzie
You know, this is really weird. I’ve been looking forward to a trip “back home” to America since I moved from there four years ago, but now that it’s actually happening, all I can think of is how little this seems like going home, but like leaving it. NZ is my home now, plain and simple, and this is vacation to visit old friends who live overseas. I already miss all my friends in NZ, and it seems strange to be travelling again. I used to travel a lot when I was younger, and a lot of my memories are of planes and flying, but I haven’t been near an airport in years. All I can remember is leaving my friends in the USA for the first time, how lost I felt when I first moved, how much I cried, how young I really was, and how much my life’s been altered since then.
I’m actually really scared. The friends I left will have changed as much as I have. They will have new friends, and a whole chunk of their lives that I have missed. What if I get on really badly with them now??? What if they’ve changed for the worst? What if...?
Bloody hell. Pull yourself together, girlie, and stop fussing.
Anyhow, it’s been going okay so far. I am not a morning person, so getting up at 5:30am was not fun at all. But, Kristen, whose family picked us up, can vouch for the fact that the adrenaline had me bouncing all the way to the terminal. Don’t worry, Kris, I got [comparatively] more normal fast, and was pretty much outta energy by 8:00am.
We are on our way to Sydney at the moment; we have a 4-hour stopover there before carrying on to San Francisco, California. I’ve been working on a novel I’m writing on my laptop, and I found you can listen to music on the airplane screen thingy in front of you, so I took off to Viva La Vida, and now I’ve found Queen, the soundtracks to Pirates of the Caribbean, Sherlock Holmes, and Mamma Mia, and am happily grooving to Bohemian Rhapsody, Pirates and Holmes’s themes, and Dancing Queen. Very happy! Freddie Mercury rocks (if you’ll excuse the pun!), and I love movie music!!!  This has been the most awesome flight ever so far!!!
I really have nothing better to do than write to all you charming people, but I am liable to write a book if left to my own devices on the computer for much longer, so I better sign off, and go and write my book!
An hour’s left on the flight.
Wish me luck, folks!
Rachel :o)