One Flight, Three Days

It still hasn't hit me yet. I'm leaving tomorrow, my bags are mostly packed, and still it is hard to conceive that in just a few days I'll be in Darwin, Australia. Packing has been going well under the scrutinizing supervision of my dad the past week or so, but you can't blame him for wanting it all to go well. 


I have learned some things about my family in the process- for example, how much my dad loves sunscreen (or sun tan lotion, if you are one of the many that believe the words are interchangeable, like myself).  Apparently we have eleven bottles/tubes of sunscreen in our house- you'd think we live in a desert or something.  Let me repeat that- eleven. tubes. of. sunscreen. You have to pack light, too- they suggest that you bring a sleeping bag, which will take up at least 30% of your total luggage space.  But packing is only one aspect of pre-travel arrangements. After all, there is so much to do before traveling to a different country!


At least there are no required shots for traveling to Australia, but the list of to-do's still piles high.  You need to get travel health insurance, get travelers insurance, book and confirm flights, call credit card companies and inform them you are leaving, get Australian money (they use the Australian dollar, which currently is a little stronger than the US dollar unfortunately), make sure your passport is current, get an international student ID card, alongside packing and other preparations. After all of that and having to wait endlessly in anticipation for the day you leave, its time to fly. And that day is tomorrow.


And if the pre-travel sounded like a lot, the flights alone will take even longer. I fly from Pittsburgh to Dallas to LA to Sydney to Darwin, four flights. The LA to Sydney is undoubtedly the longest, and notably the 23rd longest flight in the world.  We fly out of LA at 10pm on Saturday, and arrive in Sydney around 630am on Monday.  That's a three day long flight! However with the international date line, and knowing that Australia is 15 hours ahead of Pittsburgh/Michigan time and 18 hours ahead of LA time, its not really as long as it seems. Pull out your calculators and you know that it's going to be a long flight- around 15 hours long. Not to mention the other flight lengths, which add up. However, the flight is going to be filled mostly with students from the 7ish programs that UNSW sponsors (Energy Tomorrow is one of them), so it will definitely be exciting to meet everyone on the long flight out from LA. But that's all for now though, keep checking in once we start getting to the meat of the story- the actual trip!

Qantas, the Australian airline we'll be on