The pilot? lol

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Hello, my dear friends and family

Where do I even start!?!

Honestly, I spent every spare second of my summer thinking and planning for this trip. But what I didn't think about was how much I hate goodbyes! I don't think Madi and I have ever been so nice to each other for such an extended period of time! (minus the eyeliner + bus incident... sorry about that madz).

It was nearly a week ago now that I spent my last sleepless night in New Zealand, packing my bags at 3am with my 5am flight looming ever closer. Tearful goodbyes behind me, I boarded my flight to Australia where I immediately proceeded to film a boring, 7 minute long video of us taking off in pitch darkness. Typical me really. Australia was a good time, with theme parks and waterfalls and a very cute 2 year old 😊 With my final goodbyes done, I boarded my flight to LA.

My first solo long haul flight was pretty good, I obviously watched lots of movies, picked the ones I thought would be funny but I still ended up crying anyway. It was cool because I made myself a new friend, forged by the sharing of food and the irrational anger at the person in front of you for reclining their chair (Seriously though, the WHOLE time? AND she took the last vegetarian option!) Anyway, we arrived and I filmed another long video because I liked the palm trees. I've got a lot of footage to delete on my phone but I'm trying not to think about it because it just fills me with dread.

Hold on, I'm almost at the actual good stuff! Navigating through LAX would have been a nightmare If I hadn't looked up how it all worked, especially because I only had an hour to make it to my next flight! It was a close one.

Here we go.

SAN. FRAN. CISCO.

I arrived in the city with around 2 hours of sleep under my belt, picked up my bags, and dragged my very jetlagged but excited self to the BART station (train station). That makes it sound so easy, but actually it took a lot of figuring out how the train system worked and where to go! On the train I caught my first up close glimpse of America - the USA flag waving proudly on top of a McDonalds building. It felt appropriate. Once in the city, I was startled by the quantity of homeless people... Here I was, this young solo female traveller, walking around confused and lost with a 1000 ton backpack. I could see the messages every persons expression: "You're a target...." Maybe I was just being paranoid! One hour in, the heat of the afternoon had increased, my shoulders were screaming and with every dodgy person I passed I was getting increasingly desperate. I was ready to attempt at waving a taxi (How do Americans do that again?) when I looked up and saw my hotel. Ah, sweet relief. I would spend the rest of the day resting here and feeling guilty for not being outside...Then going outside and wanting to run back because the streets and people of San Fran can be pretty intimidating at first. After taking too many photos of the police cars and fire engines, I went to sleep at 6pm, ready to have a proper full on adventure the following day. I woke up at 12am, thought, fuck it, then stayed up till 3am talking to friends. That was day one!

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Comments

[mavis]

ur better at writing than i realised, i felt like i was reading my own work xxx

[Breezyroundtheworld]

wow! that must make you a pretty incredible writer ;)