I have arrived in Brisbane Australia and I am alive and well!
I apologize to those who have been waiting for updates, the past 6 days have been quite a blur and I needed a couple days to reorient myself before I could have the brain capacity to write.
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On Monday I arrived at the airport in Buenos Aires around 2pm with my Grandma to check in to our flights. Then, just after 3pm we said our goodbyes, a lot harder than we thought it would be, and set out on our separate ways as she boarded her flight to back to Canada.
A couple hours later I was able to go through security to find my gate in a very dimly lit area of the airport. I boarded my first of 4 flights after everyone went through yet another bag search and said farewell to South America.
The flight itself was meh. I cannot say I am impressed with United Airlines. Their seats are small, food is barely edible and the entertainment system kept crashing, and I only got a couple hours of broken sleep. Regardless, I made it Houston safely and found a nice lady from the airline who was able to ensure my check baggage would be forwarded all the way through to Brisbane for me so I would not have to worry about checking it at any of my transfer points. Then I waited in Houston for 9 hours. Thank you Jesus for Netflix.
Despite the flight to San Fransisco being packed and having almost no entertainment I quite enjoyed the flight. I was lucky enough to be seated beside a very nice older lady and we talked nearly the entire flight about almost every topic imaginable and shared our life stories while she fed me chocolate covered banana chips and cashews.
San Francisco was wet and rainy, but I was still able to briefly see the Golden Gate Bridge from the plane window. The flight to Vancouver was slightly delayed which I knew would make my next transfer a little tighter, but the couple beside me also happened to be connecting to the Brisbane flight so I knew I wasn’t alone in my struggle. There was also the worst turbulence I have ever experienced around 5 minutes after take off.
The Vancouver Airport is much nicer than any of the other Airports I have been to, and I kind of wish I could have stayed in Vancouver longer as I love BC deeply. As a Canadian in Canada all of a sudden security became a much quicker process. I was able to make it to my gate with approximately 30 minutes to spare and since the flight was only two thirds full I was able to get moved to an aisle seat with an empty seat beside me. The flight also happened to be aboard Air Canada’s Dreamliner with lots of room and comfortable seat which made for quite a pleasant flight. I only got a few half hour segments of broken sleep, but once we were close to Australia the excitement kept me awake for good.
All in all it was a total 51 hours in transit. I learned that personal hygiene is nearly impossible in planes and airports without any elite status.
I was incredibly excited and happy to arrive at the YWAM base around 9:30am on Thursday, they gave me a quick tour, some time to shower and I was in lectures at 10:30am.
The weather is beautiful and warm here, the campus is amazing and I’m surrounded by truly fantastic people. I absolutely love it here, and I am so exited for the months ahead.
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