I can hardly believe I’m saying this but we are actually flying away TOMORROW! Ironically, we’re not flying Air New Zealand but I thought this was an appropriate picture anyway. We’ll actually be flying United Airlines from Seattle to Los Angeles, then Air Pacific from Los Angeles to Fiji, and a different Air Pacific flight from Fiji to Auckland. We take off at 4:08pm tomorrow, January 26th, and land at 11:30am on January 28th, local time. It’s going to be a long haul but me and Ash have never been on a plane together so it’s going to be an adventure too. We’re really excited.

We had quite a trial of dealing with our bags today. We had gotten the luggage requirements all wrong and thought it was $50 per extra checked bag... it actually turns out it’s more like $400!!! So we suddenly found a significant amount of stuff we didn’t need. But we are going to miss a bunch of it, but what can we do? We even looked into shipping a box of extra stuff via UPS, but apparently New Zealand is on a list of countries that doesn’t allow the shipment of “personal items,” which means that anything we shipped into the country would have to be classified as something else, and we would have to pay duty, taxes, and brokerage fees for it. It would probably be at least $500 for one box. So obviously that was out.

So that was a bit of a stress, but luckily Ashley is an AMAZING packer and can fit a ridiculous amount of stuff into a small bag. So we got our four checked bags under fifty pounds each, which is the requirement to not have to pay extra, and then we each have a carry-on, a “purse” (aka laptop bag), and a pillow. So we’re ready to roll and with no more unforeseen issues we should be good to go.

We have three-hour layovers in both Los Angeles and Fiji, so we’ll have time to get off the plane, stretch our legs, walk around, and not have to rush to get to our next gate, so that’ll be good. I’m sure it’s going to be a really long, tiring experience, but I’m also excited. I hope everything goes well and we don’t get too stressed and things go smoothly for the next day. We shall see... wish me luck!!