Well, me and Ash have made it. All our planes took off and landed successfully, we got all our luggage and got through customs and immigration, and now we’re here. We made it to Jackie’s, and we went to the mall with her, but now we’re just sitting in her living room hanging out. I feel so tired and worn out from our travels that I’m glad to be doing absolutely nothing. Even going to the grocery store to get some food and trying to find things that remotely match what I’m used to and seeing how expensive food is and all the different options for stuff, I feel so overwhelmed and nervous, like we really have to be adults now and make this work. I know we can, but it’s still a bit nerve-wracking. I can’t believe we actually moved here!! It’s so crazy, but exciting.

We see trees everywhere, some palms and various other kinds of trees that I don’t even know the names of. Same with birds, bugs, etc.- many are unrecognizable. I’m looking forward to learning about them all, and everything is so pretty here. The water is beautiful, and seeing how green the country is from the plane was cool (and only the North Island, which is the less green of the two!). We want to see everything but we also want to recover from the ordeal of getting here, which was intense.

Our flight from Seattle to Los Angeles was alright, as we got to sit together in two chairs side-by-side and it wasn’t too long of a flight. It was also at four in the afternoon, so we weren’t very tired. The flight from Los Angeles to Fiji was AWFUL. I was sitting wedged between Ashley, who had the window seat, and this other guy from Toronto who was really annoying the whole time. The plane was excruciatingly hot, but it seemed only in our area, like maybe some air vents were malfunctioning. Everyone else was cold, but we were sweating and feeling miserable. It was a ten-hour flight and there was also a lot of turbulence and I really didn’t like being somewhere over the middle of the open Pacific Ocean with nowhere to crash-land safely if need be. But eventually I learned to (mostly) ignore the bumps and finally we landed. The temperature in Fiji was only about 25 but it felt much hotter because of the humidity, which was thick. So the 3-hour layover was pretty crappy.

The flight from Fiji to Auckland was okay. It was daylight so we had a beautiful view of open, blue-green ocean dotted with little white fluffy clouds, and it was exciting to see New Zealand for the first time. We were really happy to be landed, and the shuttle we’d booked picked us up and took us to Jackie’s just as we’d planned. We were giddy and excited, looking out the windows and checking everything out. Our exhaustion eventually caught up to us, as well as some of my fears, but overall we’re still really optimistic. I think me and Ash are both looking forward to sleeping long and well tonight, so let’s hope that works out!