Arrival

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I hate planes. Officially.

Left Glasgow at 4.30am on sunday, figuring I'd get to the airport at around 5.20ish. At 4.45 the taxi pulled up outside the terminal. "There you go, love." says the (incredibly nice!) taxi driver. Grrr. So after a slight wait I had to try and work out how the hell you check in, there was some machines but they looked a bit confuzling so I asked one of the staff and she practically did it for me 😊 yay!

Blah blah blah...pretty uninteresting stuff happens til I get to Heathrow, and I'm reaaally scared cos I've no idea what I'm doing, and just to make it worse I discover the terminal I need isnt even IN the airport and I need to get a train there! AAH!

Its all good though, cos on the train I find a man who is also getting on my flight. "Great, you can adopt me then 😊" I tell him. "Okay," he says, "But I might get lost too?" "No you wont." Thats him told.

Needless to say I got on the plane eventually, iiiiiinnnnncccccrrrrreeeeddddiiibbllllyyyyy proud of myself (short lived -_-) because I managed to find my way more or less on my own! woo! Was sitting between a very nice English woman called Kerys who worked in fashion in London was going to her boyfriend's friend's wedding, and an equally nice Australian man called Edward who lived in Spain and was visiting home without his wife because she was 5 months pregnant with twins 😊 (It was a very long flight, I think I now know these people's entire life stories). After what honestly seemed like 4 days the plane eventually landed in Singapore, and we had like half an hour to pee/brush teeth/stretch legs/find passport/find C24/check-in/go through security/present boarding passes, because the plane had been held up in Heathrow and was running late. Waiting in the departures lounge I was sitting opposite 2 native Aussies, one male one female. The male i gathered had been in London visiting his brother, the female there on work. She was telling him how she'd been offered a 2year contract for some job based in London. "Its so cold over there." He was telling her. "Gary was driving the car with gloves on and there was frost on all the grass! It was mental!" lol, foreigners. So this time on the plane I was sitting between a chubby guy watching The Simpsons/House/South Park on his ipod, and a French guy called Uman, who was the best person I have ever met at doing accents. Total jealous of him, he'd been all over Eastern Europe and a few other places. When I grow up I'm going to be like him. LOL.

So after another marathon flight, (13 hrs Lon - Sing, 9 hrs Sing - Syd) I arrived in Sydney. If I thought Heathrow was huge my belief was blown COMPLETELY out the window by a hundred-mile-an-hour gale and hurtled into the nearest dustbin. Sydney was massssiive. In Heathrow the baggage collection area has 2 biggish luggage wheels (you know the things I mean? the big conveyor belt things they put your bags on for you to collect?), well Sydney has SIXTEEN HUGE ones. I was lost. I just followed everyone else. Ugh but once you've got your luggage you've gotta go through customs, which takes ages and you have to wait in line forever and its really hot, and then you have to go through security, and you get these arrival cards on the plane to fill in and i didnt realise I hadnt filled all of mine in until I was waiting in the queue to get mine stamped. -_- luckily the guy behind me lent me a pen, but he didnt look to happy about it :P like im bothered mate!!

So now all that was left to do before i could FINALLY get some sleep (i hadnt slept properly for about 2 and a half days now :/) was find the Work and Travel Company guy and get in the mini-bus. I found him, and another girl called Catherine who had just come from India and was on the same programme as me. We got into the (really old) minivan thing and were on our way 😊 Point of Information: everything in Australia is old. Not like, historical old, or even run-down kid of old, but just...like you'd expect to see in India, if that makes any sense?? Probably not but I cant explain it any better than that! Which is strange because everything else is really Asian looking, there are soooooooooooooo many Asian people here :/ millions.

But anyway, like I was saying, eventually got to the hostel at about 9ish on monday night Australian time, which is about....10am monday morning British time...i think...amd checked in, got my sheets and my room key and made my way up to floor 5, only to discover that my room key wouldnt work -_- I tried it about sixty thousand times, then kidnapped one of the guys from the room next door and had him try it too, but it stiiill wasnt co-operating. I went down to reception and explained the problem and the girl came to my room, swiped the card and opened the door first time. Whaaat the hell.

There was only 1 girl in the room when i got in, but she was in her bed so I had to try and be super quiet as I unpacked my stuff, put on my sheets and got into bed. My nose wouldnt stop running as I was trying to sleep, and it wasnt until the morning when I eventually found my key card (yeah, I lost it after a grand total of about 1 hour) and went to the toilets that I realised it had been a nose bleed and my brand new baby pink pjs were all smudged with blood 😞 not good! Then when I got back to my room I realised I couldnt get in because I had locked my keycard in the bathroom!! Luckily I just knocked on the door and one of the girls inside opened it and she even came with her own keycard to let me into the bathrooms to retrieve my card, AND she pointed me in the direction of the showers, which I desperately needed by the time!!

After washing etc I had a bit of a wander around the outside of the hostel, but to be honest I only went round the block and then went back! Sydney is so pretty, there are trees on the pavements and everyone is chilled out and relaxed, but the traffic lights are bizzzaaare. I cant explain but basically you have to be dead careful not to get run over because even when the green man's showing the cars are aloud to drive through!!

There was a different girl in the room when I got back inside the Hostel, she was on traveling on her own too and invited me to Bondi Beach with her 😊 Turns out her name's Jaye and she's from London. Bondi Beach was alright, it wasnt too sunny which was good but the sand just got everywhere and I'm still trying to shake it out my bedsheets (I dunno how it got there either). You wouldnt believe how easy it is to spend 5 hours lying on a beach doing nothing, faaaaar too easy! We caught the bus back to the hostel and then headed to chinatown for dinner, we only made it about half way through Chinatown though because it was FULL of waiters waiting outside the restaurants trying to pursuade passers-by to dine with them, and Jaye and I got stuck with one veeeery pursuasive chinese bloke and just agreed to get rid of him. It was very nice though, cant complain. Oh except the table was wobbly. Very annoying.

Had to go in the shower AGAIN then (twice in one day!) to get rid of the sand which I'm sure had spread since I left the beach, then went with Jaye to watch Shrek the 3rd, which I will admit was very funny and sooo cute, and then I hit the sack at like 10pm, im still a little jetlagged!!

Woke up this morning and decided I should head down to the Work and Travel Company offices, since I got a little map when I arrived and I needed to do my Orientation (which is where they set up your bank account, give you your SIM card etc), so I started to make my way down there. The map was very clear, it looked pretty simple (Sydney is like Glasgow, all the streets are arranged in squares so its quite difficult to get lost) so there'd be no problem, right? Obviously not this is me we're talking about!!!! I ended up going faaaaaaaaaaar too far up George St and ended up at Sydney harbour! Was all good though, It had a very nice view of the opera house and stuff so it wasnt a wasted journey! I doubled back and eventually found the place I was looking for, after visiting a few shops on the way 😊 i got a pair of flip flops, or "thongs" as they're known as here, and a bag ($4, which is about 1.50) (i cant find the pound sign on this keyboard its all WEIRD!!!!) and then headed back 😊 and that was my day. Im off to get some pizza now, I'm starving.

See you all soon!!!!!!!!!!! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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