The Big send off

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I've had to back date this little entry but I'm sure you won't mind as you know I've been very busy getting ready for the big move.

The party

I would just like to thank all my friends and family who made the night of the 30th November the best send off anyone could ever ask for espicially the very embarassing slide show that some of them put together.

I couldn't ask for better support and encouragement from all my friends, and it was great to see all my different little groups come together. I will never forget getting into bed with the room spinning quite so fast :-)

Time to fly

Such an emotional day but I'm so glad I had my family there to send me off, I managed to keep it togethere until I had to actually say goodbye at the customs gate. So the red eyes and puffy face probably didn't aide in the whole body scanning process as I had to take pretty much everything out of my hand luggage to get scanned and then getting stopped by the metal detector was supposed to be a joke (Chelsea) but yes as per normal I somehow managed to set the alarm off. Having already taken my boots, belt and hair grips off there wasn't much else that could have set it off. The guard she was nice and well lets so thorough as she could in the public view. It wasn't exactly the best thing that could have happened to me at that point as I was literally about to run back into the car and go home. So after about 5mins of finely scanning me all over and numerous woman wanting to come through but couldn't I was taken to a private room - having seen airport and Australia customs programmes to many times I was quite cool with it. Anyway as I had a vest top under my jumper I offered to remove it for her as she had already suspected it was my underwiring. And yes thank you Marks and Spencers and the gifts that god bestowed on me the amount of underwiring I happen to require set the alarms off and caused all that commotion.

Anyway having put back all my items on and in my hand luggage I then went and treated myself to some Amber Prada perfume. YAY!!!!!

London to Istanbul

A pleasant and painless flight I had the whole row of seats to myself. Did you know that planes have cameras on them now so you can see below you? It certainly made for entertainment between watching Pacific Rim and The Wolverine (ooo Hugh Jackman)

Waiting for the next flight was weird, the airport resembles a turkish market and unless your eating somewhere or at your gate theres no where to sit. That and I was getting a few looks from other passengers as Rose was sitting proudly on top of my hand luggage and laptop.

Istanbul to Shanghai

Unfortuantly the one bad thing about having to sit (as a habit) on the wing and by a window on a flight that is, if you want to get out for a walk or grab something from your hand luggage your a massive inconvience to the person/s your sharing your row with. Lucky for me it was a fragile old chinese man who slept all the way and kept his light on which restricted my sleep and meant I literally had to clamber like an obstacle course to go to the loo - 13hrs is a long time. Tackling time differences, an annoying girl in front of me who wanted (note the wanted) to recline her chair all the way back, but for some reason my knees just wouldn't allow it to completly recline and the rather rude lady behind me who wouldn't let me recline at all I managed a few uncomfortable hours sleep and spent the rest of the journey thinking 'OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE', watching the amazing mountainous landscape beneath me and giggling away at The Hangover 3. So yeah overall not so bad, although losing my voice because it was soooooo warm on the plane and my stupid cough was not so great. And I hope the other passengers found my sleep groaning funny otherwise there would have been some annoyed people on that flight too. oops

However losing my voice made for a rather uncomfortable silent taxi journey from the airport to the hotel with a current disney teacher who had been tasked with my collection.

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