Oh the jetlag.

Good morning Australia, good night Connecticut. Lauren and I crashed around 8:45 last night and woke up today around 6:30 because we just couldn't sleep anymore. Good news - these mattresses are actually pretty comfortable. Orientation starts at 8:45 today, and my family isn't answering my Skype attempts, so I'll fill everyone in on the last few days.

Official time of departure from my house on Tuesday: 6:20am ish. I slept most of the ride up, except when You Belong With Me came on the radio and Mol, Jake and I proceeded to have an early morning singalong. Mom and Dad didn't join in...I don't blame them. Everything at Logan went smoothly; we met up with the Fish family and packing-taped up our huge "rucksacks" (that's what they call them here...and maybe many other places in the world), checked our suitcases - now here's where my mom becomes a superhero. My large suitcase weighed in at 53.6 pounds or something when we checked at the vet clinic. How much did it weigh at Logan Tuesday morning? 49.5lb BABY! Perfect.

Said goodbyes, made it through security alright, and we were off. This leg of the flight may have been the worst one, actually. It's about five and a half hours from Logan to LAX, and Lauren and I were lucky enough to sit in front of the loudest man on the flight. He was wearing earplugs...I can only assume he needed them to prevent his hearing from being damaged by the volume of his own voice. God bless the two guys sitting on either side of him (Loud Man was supposed to have the window seat, but he thought he'd be more comfortable in the middle or the aisle, and how do the airlines expect three grown men to sit together anyway?)...they had to listen to and respond to his many comments about the weather, what route the pilot would take because of said weather, what golf club in California his father belonged to, how he missed the "steady diet of bad news" you get in CA, how New England shouldn't complain about budget cuts when California is doing much worse, although Rhode Island does have an unemployment rate of 12%...on and on and on. We tried to sleep through the din, but every time Chatty Charlie got up (which was often, to say the least) he banged on the back of Lauren's seat. Fun fun fun.

We landed in LAX and were faced with a layover of eight and a half hours. So, being the adventurous folk we are, we decided to leave the airport (we checked with two 20-something male security guards first, they said DUH we could leave, we would be crazy to sit in the airport for that long) and try to find somewhere in LA to have lunch. We ended up taking a bus to Union Station and walking across the street to this little Mexican village called Pueblo, or Olvera Street. We ate lunch at some family-owned joint (there's your word, Jakie)...two soft tacos each, filled with some chewy, at times crunchy, unidentified meat. Not great, but it was food. The tax in LA, by the way, is, yikes, 7.95%, and apparently includes semi-edible Mexican food. We wandered around the village for awhile; it was a bazaar, with lots of stalls and little shops with no air conditioning. The temp was at least 85 degrees in the shade, so we were sweating. I bought two neon bandanas for a dollar each - Mom's right, I really don't have room for "crap like that," but at that price, I'll make room. It was nice to stretch the legs for awhile, the sunshine was wonder-full, the lack of English speakers charming. Eventually we bussed back and prepared ourselves for our marathon leg: 14 hours in the air.

Uncle Mike, you'll be happy to know that this flight felt the shortest of them all. I have never been so comfortable in an airplane, or maybe anywhere. The seats were huge, we had personal, fold-out screens with on-demand movies and television shows (I watched Adventureland, I Love You Man, Sunshine Cleaning and one episode of Man vs Wild), they served us dinner a few hours in which was actually delicious - I had the salmon, rice, and an unnamed green vegetable (artichoke? kale? what is kale anyway?). I took one of Lauren's Tylenol PMs, but didn't get much sleep. The movies were too good. If anyone is looking for some good movie recommendations - Adventureland is an indie teen love movie, Kristen Stewart is in it and some guy that reminds me of Michael Cera, top notch...I Love You, Man is a Paul Rudd movie, surprisingly hilarious (Mol and Jake you'd definitely like this)...and Sunshine Cleaning is really sad most of the way through, Amy Adams and Emily Blunt (the other secretary in Devil Wears Prada), but so so so good.

So! We landed in Sydney, OH MY GOD WE'RE ON ANOTHER CONTINENT. And exhausted. And not looking forward to another five hour flight. But, we didn't have time to be tired or to complain, because we only had an hour and a half, and we had to clear customs, quarantine, get our bags (even though the lady at Logan who checked our bags said they'd go all the way to Perth without having to be picked up again, thank God we checked with someone in Sydney), go through security again, and take a shuttle to the terminal. We had to fill out a card on the plane for the people at customs, saying if we had illegal drugs with us, if we had food with us, if we had been in Africa or South America in the last 30 days, if we had been in a freshwater stream, river or lake the last 30 days...Lauren and I both answered "yes" to this last one. We both dumped all of our food too, then found out we didn't need to - only things with fruit and vegis in them are quarantined. Sweet. The guy at customs asked us when we had been in a lake (I lied and said two weeks ago), what shoes we had worn in at the time (none, obviously), did we have any camping equipment with us, was my backpack considered camping equipment...but we made it through. Just in time, really. We got on a shuttle immediately and boarded, only to find that this Qantas flight would not be quite so comfortable as the last one. Seats were smaller, no personal screen...we did get breakfast though, and the scrambled eggs were actually very tasty. The movie they played was 17 Again - Zac Efron and Matthew Perry - gets two big thumbs down from me. Zac's haircut is weird.

Five hours later and we are FINALLY in Perth. Now it's oh dear, where is the man with the shuttle to take us to Murdoch? We asked around and literally every airport attendant gave me a different answer, but in the same, carefree manner...I was told to wait by baggage, to cross the street and wait by the bus terminal, to keep walking up and down the road outside the airport and look for someone with a van, that he probably wasn't coming because nobody had ever heard of a shuttle to Murdoch before, but no worries, you'll be fine. Lauren located an elderly man with a van, and after relocating me, we were off. We met a lovely couple in the van who were from New Zealand, who had just decided to take an indefinite vacation in Perth. They arrived with one bag each, no plans, and no worries. We also had another student going to Murdoch with us, a boy from Germany. He was as clueless as us about where to go when we got there, when orientation actually started, etc. We drove around downtown Perth for an hour or so...not a lot to see, actually, lots of restaurants and houses, looks a lot like Florida or what I imagine Arizona or New Mexico look like, but the coast is beautiful.

We made it to Murdoch...felt like it took seven years, actually; I think it was about 3:30pm our time when we pulled in. The rest I'll have to save for another post because this one is ginormous, and because orientation starts in half an hour and I'm still in my pjs.

Love to the states, I miss it already.