How the trip home really went...

Well, thanks to a great friend living in Hawaii, I haven't had to do a straight through trip in a long time... so I was a little taken aback when I had my first real bout with Jet Lag in years... I started out fine. I thought, I've hardly slept on the plane, I've stayed up until midnight catching up with Rob & Monica... I should sleep like a rock tonight... But OH NO... 3:30am rolls around and I am wide awake. So I kill some time, stay awake until past 11pm the next night and think "Surely, I'll sleep through the night." I was so excited when I woke up at Mykel and Eric's house after watching Sydney's Pirate performance (and it was an excellent performance I might add) the night before and it was DAYLIGHT! Yes! Mission accomplished... I managed to sleep in... but no. I forget, that in the lovely state of Washington, hovering around 49 degrees north, gets nice long daylight hours in summer. I guess the chilly, grey weather let me forget that the sun rises around 5:15 that time of the year... That's right... it was only 5:40am. Bugger!

But, it turned out well, after a morning of distracting the kids from getting ready for school and then a quick 30 minute run, I went to Bellevue to catch up with my Symetra Peeps. It was a great time and I was so glad to see people, but I ran short on time and had to arrange to come back after my visit in Spokane. Friday night was Kristy's 30th birthday party and it was sooo great to see all the girls, even Hallie, fresh from her long journey from London (she too had multiple travel issues and no sleep for about 28 hours). But the excitement of the event and reunion kept us all going. :)


Hallie, with her fresh Jet Lag and I decided it would be best if we shared a room that night to keep from disturbing the others when we woke at 3:40am... It turns out that 6+ months of separation from each other made for early morning giggling and we woke up half the house anyway... but I think we made up for it by sneaking out to pick up some fresh bakery goodies from the Columbia City Bakery down the street and cheerfully getting our name on the 'list' for breakie at Geraldine's cafe. With the large group, it took awhile to get us all a table. After breakfast, we had some down time and then I was off to Spokane to visit the 'rents for a few days.

While in Spokane, not only did I get to see Grandma-who is doing very well-but caught up with an old school chum, Jera. It was great to catch up with her, meet her husband and see that she has settled into a nice life for herself back in Cheney. I also managed to squeeze some time out of Nicole, who had lots to do while she was in Spokane and meet up with our old friend Damian. We got a tour of his very lovely house on the South hill and had some quality time just the three of us. I was very pleased to catch up with him as he, Nicole and I spent a lot of time together back at Wazzu. I did spend a better part of my time in Spokane sleeping off the tail end of my head cold, battling the last of my jet lag and of course meeting Mom and Dad's new horse... His name is Casey and he is a beautiful sorrel with a nice white blaze and 3 out of 4 white feet. Nanette and I were able to sneak off to do a little shopping and sister bonding time over the new Indiana Jones movie. Good flick! I also got to catch up with my friend Matthew, who believe it or not, has a beautiful little girl who was absolutely the spitting image of him and quite a bright little thing with plenty of attitude... so nice to see that justice was being repaid to Matt as he was quite the trouble maker as a kid himself. :)


Back to Seattle for the big wedding. But first, some quality time with some of the girls when we went to Spa Del Lago for a group pedicure. Yeah! such pretty toes... Then we checked into our hotel, had a little madness coordinating pick ups and balloons for the big event and then off to the wedding of the summer(or winter if you're an Aussie).

The wedding was in a community hall in south Seattle with a beautiful great room and a large room upstairs that would be the playroom for the kids as the night progressed. Kristy looked absolutely gorgeous with here white halter-neck gown and Adam looked handsome as ever. A testament to Kristy in that there were people from all over the world as well as all over the country that came to her lovely affair. The food was delicious and with a lot of variety, plus the most succulent strawberry's one has ever tasted. And what better to go with them than a nice glass of bubbly to toast to the bride and groom! Yummy! After a night of dancing, laughing, story telling and photo-booth action, Nicole, Ally and I headed back to our hotel after dropping the fine miss Abby off at her place.

The next morning was a great little breakie event at Julia's in Wallingford (a place popular with us girls when we all lived so close). Mr. Tim Botz did a stand up job of being the only male to attend and he even had some lovely patriarchal things to say. :) It was so great to have Julie R, Emi-Bo and the rest of the clan there!

Later, Nicole and I spent the afternoon lounging at Nordstroms and shoe shopping before she headed off to the airport. I got to spend the next few days recuperating and spending some quality time with Bazin! before jetting off at 1 in the morning to return to Aussie land. All in all it was such a fabulous trip and it was so great to see everyone, have some one on one time and catch the worst cold in a decade... yes, that is right, I got to return to Australia with Abby or Ally's cold-maybe even a combination of them both! Luckily, I just took several days to rest up once I returned here and slept a lot.

Backwards and Forwards...

Wouldn't you know it, but by taking the first flight out of Melbourne's smaller, regional airport (Avalon) I made a very BIG mistake! The flight was delayed coming in from Sydney and therefore delayed 45 minutes to get out of Melbourne. I only had originally about an hour and a half in Sydney to gather my bags, transfer to the International airport and get checked in, through immigration and on through security. This was drastically cut in half by the 'small' delay getting out of Melbourne. Little did I realize, how being the second to last person to check in for an international flight on a 'new to me' airline would be sooo stinking complicated. I had spent the previous weekend trying to desperately recover from a head cold so that traveling wouldn't be too painful and then had to run through airports, catch a train and find a check in counter for China Airlines. Luckily for me, the counter was still open and I got my bag checked and off to immigration I go. Once I got there, however, another kink occurred. The agent simply said that my boarding pass-or at least what I THOUGHT was my boarding pass-wouldn't work. Pointing at the ticket he said I had to go back. I couldn't work out why because it clearly said my flight number and Sydney to Taipei (which was right as far as I knew) looking at the other things the ticket agent had provided me, I saw that I had a boarding pass for Taipei to Seattle (phew-that was a relief) and my baggage claim. That was all he handed me. The immigration agent, still pointing at the flight information said "This isn't your boarding pass." here I am thinking, what the hell could it be if it wasn't my boarding pass when he said, "The names don't match!" Crap. What do I do? He said, "You have to go back, love. Just head through those doors there and come back with a new boarding pass." So off I go, running back to the check in counter, where the last person must have checked in because they were quickly closing up the counter and shutting down the computers. As I cam running up, the ticket agent recognized me and I yelled "You gave me the wrong boarding pass!" He gave me a look of confusion and I began waving my boarding pass frantically as I starting coughing and wheezing from my running down the corridors. He had a closer look and said, "Oh, let me call the gate, I've already given the all clear." I ask, "What about my bags? Are the checked through under the wrong name?" He says, "No, they should be fine." "Are you sure?" I really need that bag to go with me to America!" "Yes, I will double check but I think we just picked up the wrong boarding pass when you were here before." Sure enough, my bag was checked in fine and in the mean time the agent gave me an exit row seat and escorted me all the way through Immigration to Security and then all the way to the gate! Luckily, they were still boarding as I approached the gate and I wasn't even the last one on the plane! Thank goodness for that! After all the excitement it took a moment for me to realize that the flight wasn't full and I had the whole exit row to myself! Woohoooo!!

Now, I can go into a detailed account of the rest of my 21 hour journey... but I think the exciting part is over, but I will give you a few fast facts regarding the journey...

• 7 Movies were watched
• Charlie Wilson's War, Dan in Real Life, How She Moves, I Could Never Be Your Woman, I'm Not There, Bucket List and Enchanted.
• Food from Sydney to Taipei was okay, food from Taipei to Seattle... I little too authentic for my westernized tastes.
• No sleep-too excited about the impending visit

Oh... and by the way... I have Small World Syndrome (SWS). If you haven't heard of this amazing disease... you clearly haven't tried to move to another country and/or have not travelled enough. I never thought I would be one to come down with this particular disease... I mean, I am a bit of a home-body when it comes to certain things and I also didn't really start to travel until my late 20's... but here is why I officially declare I have SWS.

• Moved to another country to find that I now live in the same city as someone I knew through Junior High and High School... who by the way, I also ran into in Canada on an annual ski trip with my girls.
• Fly through Taipei to save a few hundred bucks and lo and behold, there is an ex-coworker taking the same flight to Seattle...

I know, there is only two bullet points, but seriously...I think they are very significant points. Anyway, it was enough to make it official in my mind.

How many of you have SWS? I'd love to hear your story on when you discovered it or how you contracted it!

That's all for now!
Ciao! or shall I say...zàijiàn