I made it!

After 18+ hours of traveling, we are finally here in Auckland!  I am so grateful that everything went so smoothly throughout the entire process.  Flying to Los Angeles by myself gave me a lot of time to reflect on this past year, and think about what I want accomplish in this new year.  I can't believe it is 2011!  But I am excited to see what is coming...and I get to start off my year experiencing New Zealand.  That is pretty incredible.  It was a great flight though.  I sat down, and the girl who was sitting next to me sits down and asks me if I had seen Chris Brown in first class!! He was on my flight from Atlanta to LA!  I wanted to get up and check it out, but there were so many people still trying to board.  But that sparked our conversation, and she was so fun to talk to.  She is originally from Africa, but is in her 3rd year of Dental school at UCLA.  I told her that I was on my way to New Zealand for a study abroad, and she was telling me about how in Africa when all the high school kids graduate, it is totally normal and acceptable for them to take off a year to travel the world before they begin college.  I wish the US was that way!  How amazing would that be?  But she was so nice and we had some really good conversations throughout the flight.  The five hours went by really fast.


Once I landed in LA, I had to check back into Air New Zealand.  There was only one agent checking people in with tons of us waiting.  I got to talking with this man standing behind me, and he was just hilarious.  He had been spending the past month in LA with his grandchildren, but was born and raised in Australia.  He talked my ear off the whole hour or so we were waiting to get checked in.  I also got to see Hannah and Kara who are a part of the group!  I think that is when it all started to really hit me...taking off in Atlanta I felt like I was just heading back to Utah again for school...but now I was getting ready to board a plane for Auckland, New Zealand!


It was so nice to see everyone at the gate!  And to compare seat assignments and everything.  I got to sit by Katie (my wonderful roommate) and Diana, who is so sweet.  It was fun getting to know her a little better.  It is going to be fun to look back and see how close we all became throughout these three months.  The flight was great though!  I don't know why I was so worried about it.  We took off, were fed about an hour into the flight, then I took my Simply Sleep, brushed my teeth, and I was out for like 6 hours! Then off and on for another 2.  Then we had breakfast, I watched a movie, and we landed in Auckland!  It was so great.