Travel

I arrived at JFK airport an hour and half prior to my flight. When I checked my luggage I had to show my passport as identification. The employee looks at it and tells me its invalid. I hadn't signed it. Apparently if you enter another country without signing your passport they won't allow you to just sign it then, they will literally send your ass back to the USA. So I signed it. I went through security no problem and sat down near my gate only to realize my finger was bleeding. I must have nicked it on something while traveling through the high speed security routine. Haven't even gotten out of the airport and already I've injured myself, wonderful.

The flight to LAX was pretty uneventful besides my discovery that Dupicity is in fact a terrible movie. After that 6 hour flight, I checked to make sure I knew what gate my flight to Sydney was departing from, went to the bathroom, bought a water, then immediately got on line to board the plane. Nothing like going on a 6 hour flight, spending 15 minutes in the airport, and then taking off on a 14 hour flight. I found my seat and saw that for this brutal bitch of a flight, I will be sitting next to an old Mexican lady who does not speak a word of English. She actually wasn't that bad to sit next to through the entire flight. However, one odd thing about her was she didn't do a goddamn thing throughout the entire ride. She spent a lot of time watching whatever inflight movie was being shown, but she didn't listen to it. You might be thinking that she wasn't listening to the movie because she only speaks Spanish and wouldn't understand it. However, audio was provided in Spanish. Is Mexico so fucking boring that looking at movie, but not listening to it is amusing enough to hold one's attention for hours on end.

The plane landed in Sydney and I had a lot more time to kill than in the LAX airport. I got through security and immediately proceeded to the bathroom since I hadn't shit in 15 hours. The bathroom was awesome. They have softer toilet paper than the stuff I use at home. It was just really nice. I got to the gate and after a half hour they announce our flight has been delayed due to a mechanical problem. This struck me as odd as I had just flown 14 hours in that exact plane. We did just fine for that 14 hour span, I don't really see what could've gone wrong in the 30 minutes the plane just sat there doing nothing.

Eventually we got on the plane and arrived in Melbourne two hours later. It was the quickest flight I've ever been on. After 14 hours, a two hour flight is laughable. It's like, "ha, two hours, thats child's play."

I arrived at RMIT, my future residence for the next four months. It's kind of lame but it could be much worse. Two BC students and I then proceeded to walk around the city looking for the Big W (Walmart) to buy shampoo and soap. I've never been so excited to buy shampoo and soap. I'm also kind of hoping that the Big W doesn't actually have any affiliation with Walmart. I've already spent $70 there and I'm afraid this means my soul will rot in hell. We got dinner at 5:00 at McDonalds. Once again, not my finest moment. It's the first thing I ate in Australia, so sad. I'm hoping its the last time I ever buy food there.

All and all, it was a pretty shitty first day, but that was expected. I fell asleep at 9:00pm. That may seem early but it was a struggle even to stay up that late.