We Speak No Americano

After 18 hours of flying, plus ten hours hanging around airports and a whole lot of turbulence, I’ve finally arrived in Providence, RI at Culture Camp. Having flown across multiple time zones, my body clock is pretty mucky at the moment, and I’ve lived in the 21^st of July way too long.

Ten of us boarded in Auckland International Airport on the 21^st of July at 1.10pm local time, and from there I had an excited, sleep deprived 12 hour and 25 minute flight with my faithful airplane buddy Bryce and the three other happy campers sitting behind us; Alannah, Michael and Amy. Although a selection of new and old movies were available, I couldn’t bring myself to watch any of them fully and instead watched two episodes of the American version of ‘The Office’ and two new episodes of ‘The Mentalist’. Other than that, Bryce and I stuck to playing the built in games like Invaders, Chess and Checkers.

I was lucky enough to know Andrea on the flight, a family friend who’s an air hostess and she brought me over some stylish Qantas PJs from Business Class, a toilet bag and some cashews and almond bags. The meals were interesting; we were given two scheduled meals Dinner and Breakfast. For the five of us that didn’t sleep any longer than three hours combined, the wait between the two meals seemed like forever as the time rolled past 3 am Los Angeles time, to when we were finally fed a hearty meal just after 4.30am.

Thankfully, the scrambled eggs were decent as, mushrooms on the side, a sausage (unfortunately no bacon as advertised), some baked beans and a warm muffin was enough to cure my hunger for many hours. Come to think of it, I’ve not had a proper meal since then. 

Don’t worry Mum, I’m fine, I’ve been drinking my water. I even bought a 20oz bottle (or 591ml in Kiwi speak).

At Los Angeles we were met by EF representatives thank goodness, LAX is so huge! Walking between our arrival gate and our departure gate at 7 am local time, we saw four police cars and many huge oddly shaped cars and buses. From there the group split up; Hannah, Matt and I were off to catch two connecting US Air flights while the others were leaving an hour later and travelling through Minnesota and then onto Providence with Delta airlines.

Hanging around Gate 1 in LAX for three hours was somewhat exciting yet painfully slow. We did a lot of people watching, Hannah and I got Starbucks, they love it here there were two stores in Terminal / Gate 1 and three in Charlotte airport that we saw, and Matt got some Mc Donalds. We charged our laptops, had a look around in the overly priced touristy shops and waited some more. Thankfully, apart from being a long four hour flight with no built in entertainment in the airplane, everything went to getting from LAX to Charlotte, North Carolina.

Due to thunder showers in Providence our third and final flight, from Charlotte, was delayed and we ended up leaving an hour later than planned. Fortunately I was able to grab some much needed interrupted sleep while we waited to take off and during the beginning of the flight.

I finish drafting this whilst still hundreds of miles in the air at 2 pm on the 22^nd Auckland time and 10pm still on the 21^st, Boston time and I’m knackered. I’ve not had proper sleep in 30 hours, and it’s a killer.

It’s been funny to listen to everyone’s different accents because all day we’ve either been up in the air or waiting at an airport, so there are so many different types of people everywhere. A highlight would have to have been when our EF guide in LAX said “Holy Mackerel”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone in New Zealand say that, ever.

I’ve probably bored you enough by now so I’ll finish this and post it when I get internet at camp, after I some long awaited, stress and turbulence free sleep of course. What happens tomorrow is still up in the air at the moment (that was a really bad pun, remember I’m sleep deprived, blame Bryce for being all punny on Quantas) but I’ll keep ya posted.

Kia Kaha (: