THE LONGEST DAY EVER Pt 2

It’s now Thursday in Australia I’d been on a plane or in an airport for oh 34 hours...no big deal! When I arrived in Gold Coast I finally got to see what Australia was all about. As I mentioned before Sydney was fogged right in so I didn’t actually get to see any of it besides the airport and the runway leading away from it! Gold Coast is beautiful! There are beaches for miles and beautiful trees and it’s very small city trendy. I arrived in Coolongatta to smiling Dave and was instantly relieved! Luckily he had seen my flight was delayed and went for a surf while he waited. Also a very proud tour guide he took me back to the beach he was surfing at so that I could see the sights as it was a pretty nice winter’s day and he could get in another surf before we headed back to his place. So I did a towel change (very common and a must learn in Oz) and we headed to the beach.





I went for a swim and rinsed off all the airport stink and grime and then had a little bake in the sun while I waited for Dave to surf it up. Pretty sure I got burned in the half hour I was out there but it was worth it! I made a mental note to buy sunscreen ASAP!
Dave and I went to Subway after that and then hit the road for his place at Southern Cross University in Lismore. We stopped in Byron Bay briefly and I took a couple pics (Once I get better at this and internet is free I'll put lots of pics in my posts) but it was getting cold by then and we had a party to attend at Unibar! So we rocketed back to Lismore and chatted about all the new people he’d met so far, stopped at a Salvos (thrift store) to get some gear (the party was retro theme) and the liquor store (where I was instantly pissed off at myself for not stopping at the duty free because hard alcohol is INSANELY expensive!!) to get some goon (insanely cheap) and up the mountain to Lismore.
We arrived to an empty dorm so I had a shower and got settled into my room which was sweet because I got my own bed and everything. We got dressed and had some dins and then headed out goon bag in tow and up to his buddy’s dorm for a rousing game of Kings (which has very similar rules to the hometown favourite with some fun twists like Kangaroo Court I’ll teach you all when I get home) being played by people with names like Bully and Wilko and other nicknames having nothing to do with the person at all! I was instantly the girl with the accent surrounded by very young uni students the majority of whom were male. Jet lagged or not I was somewhat overwhelmed! Luckily I had the goon to keep me going and the music was rousing and more and more chicks showed up as time passed. Everyone was VERY nice and welcoming (the whole new semester new people thing helped I’m sure) and we moved the party around a couple times playing drinking games as we went until it was time to make our way down the mountain (on foot) to the campus bar. Unibar had a great vibe to it and i continued to get drunk with my new found friends. Everyone was super friendly buying me goon sunrises (yes substitute tequila with cheap wine) and dancing up a storm. I had to remind myself that although there were some lookers, chances were they were all very young and it was still just my first night! I wound up spending most of the evening with my new friend Ashlee and her roommate who’s name still evades me and a couple of guys that were dancing with them. Dave very graciously made sure I was ok to get home before he peaced out to pull a chick (not the one he’d be eyeing up for days) and we shut the place down. Once outside I was forced with the dilemma of going to Magellan a different dorm campus where Ashlee lived and everyone (including the hotty I’d been eyeing up) was going or to try and get my sorry ass up the mountain to Orion (my new home). I opted to go with the flow (I really had no clue which end was up at this point and there were safety in numbers) and started walking to ‘Madge’. The trip was adventurous and chivalrous all in one. Avoiding falling into the pond and seeing the odd rabbit run by while being offered a jacket from ‘hotty’ was very exciting. I think there may have been a cartwheeling competition on the soccer field at one point but things are blurry! Anyway we arrived at Madge where we realized that there was neither food nor booze to continue the party and we were basically all quite far from ‘home’ drunk and it was now around 3am! To make a long story short some guy from Oregon who was with hotty was trying to get with Ashlee’s roomie and was making fun of my accent by speaking in an Irish one. Hotty and I chatted for a while and I learned that he was a 33 year old med student with an Engineering degree that used to be in the Aussie Air Force and he lived in Woloongong (not anywhere near Lismore) and he was leaving the next day.  But he was also tired and wanted to go back to his dorm (a different one than both the one we were at and the one I was staying in) and he would walk me back to mine on the way. So we made the trek out and back to Orion where I’m pretty sure I expected a wild animal to jump out at every turn! It was intense! Anyway I got safely to my door where I gave hotty back his jacket and thanked him for his kindness with a hug...that turned into a wicked make-out session against the wall on the doorstep of the dorms! I had briefly entertained the idea of letting this get out of hand but the words of wisdom my friends imparted before I left were swarming my brain: “Don’t fall for the first guy with an accent you meet” “Be safe” “Don’t get pregnant” etc. So we parted ways and I went inside alone. Sighing blissfully... If only I hadn’t been the drunkest, most exhausted and delusional girl on the planet I would have thought to get Mr Perfect’s phone number....or for that matter his name! Oops! At about 4am I finally crawled into bed ready to wake up to the new adventure I had just arrived to.

The LONGEST DAY EVER!!

I knew that going to Australia was going to be a long journey and I was quite prepared for the flight and the jet lag but nothing prepared me for LAX and the extreme day I had!
I flew out of Vancouver on Tuesday morning. I was quite anxious I guess the night before or something like that because I slept very very little. It could have been because I was in a hotel sharing a bed with my mom, or my computer flashing to remind me that it was left on, or maybe just the fact that I was about to go halfway around the world by myself and was pondering the fun and or scary things that were about to take place this year. Whatever the case, I hardly slept. I figured it didn’t really matter though because the more tired I was the easier it would be to sleep on the plane to Oz. So anyway we got up at around 5am on Tuesday morning, showered got ready and went to the airport. My mum and my sister waited nicely with me before I had to hit up customs and all that to fly to LA. I managed not to get all emotional and teary and only shed a few with my good byes and then hit the skies. West Jet is an amazing company, their flight attendants are quite fun and seem to enjoy their jobs. I was chipper and excited perhaps a little giddy! Well that is until I got to LAX. That is the SHITTIEST airport on the planet. It has to be! There’s no way that any other major airport can compare. It’s pathetic!!
I arrived at LAX and went into what looked like a New York subway station to pick up my luggage before heading off to find these wonderful lockers in which you could store your luggage for the afternoon and go out into the city and see the sights. (I was told this was possible and that there was even a shuttle to do so and since I had a ‘layover’ of 10 hours I figured this was perfect!) I walked up to the information desk and asked the ladies behind it about the shuttle and the lockers. The woman behind the desk looked at me like I was an idiot and said “Who are ‘they’?” as in who was the asshole that told you this was possible? Because guess what?! There’s no shuttle, there’re no lockers and you can’t check your baggage with the airline for 6 more hours. You’re trapped in LAX ALL DAY LONG. Muahhahhaha!!! Actually she was really friendly and told me that since 9/11 (effing terrorism!!) they didn’t keep lockers because they were afraid (of course they are) that someone would put a bomb in the locker and leave. Yeah because if I were going to bomb something I’d bomb the SHITTIEST airport ever! Not something cool or monumental like.... ANYWHERE else!! Needless to say the lady gave me a brochure for LA’s new state of the art transit system and told me I could lug my bag around LA or just sit on a bus and do a sort of sight seeing tour of the city or I could go to a hotel nearby and sleep (seemed like a good idea except that I was saving myself for the flight to prevent jet lag) or I could suck it up and go sit somewhere for the next 9 hours. F.M.L.
So I did a little wandering around and found that there’s no place in that airport to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine, or really sit at all. So I went to the ‘nice’ part of the airport which I have forgotten the name of as I’m trying to repress the memory but it’s the international terminal and I waited. For nine hours. Thank god for my adorable new laptop and the powers of streaming videos. I finally was able to get outta that godforsaken place and was in the skies on VAustralia flight where I had (for a brief and magical moment) an open seat next to me until a girl (although nice) sat her rotund bum in that seat with her equally rotund boyfriend next to her leaving me to curl into the corner and attempt to prevent jet lag. I actually didn’t sleep too badly all things considered being that it was an airplane, very little leg room, the sudden and violent leg twitching likely from lack of sleep etc. I would like to thank the makers of sleep eze for their magical drugs that gave me quite the trip when I polished off my free vodka soda with dinner after having two extra strengths to knock me out! I think that’s how some people kill themselves.... You mostly just feel like you’re floating and really drunk but there’s also a distinct panicky feeling where you just might fall asleep and not wake up! Don’t do it! It’s bad news! Anyway 14 hours later just before 6am Sydney time the captain comes on and tells us that Sydney is really foggy and we might have to fly to Melbourne I had a mini at that point trying to decide what the hell to do about the flight i had to catch to Gold Coast and Dave waiting for me in Gold Coast and the fact that I had no phone yet and how I really just wanted to get off the plane NOW....but we landed in Sydney and it was good. For a few more minutes anyway. I got through customs (after a brief quarantine- just lie on the customs sheet if you’ve been to a farm or near fresh water HELLO I’m CANADIAN!! It’s much easier!) I took the shuttle to the domestic terminal (Sydney airport is beautiful...in fact it’s the nicest airport on the planet I’ve decided mainly because it’s not LAX) and found out that my plane to Gold Coast would be delayed at least half an hour due to the same fog! GUH! Of course I learned this AFTER I went past the duty free, and past the fun shops and phone kiosks etc and was stuck in another boring departure terminal. This should be split into two I think...stay tuned!