Well, this is the last time I mock the sickness gods. While my flights were smooth, connections located close to each other, and I even slept for six hours between LAX and Sydney, my disease migrated itself into my face during my 26 hours of transit. Got to fly around downtown Sydney during landing, that was awesome. I regret that my camera was stashed in the overhead bin or I would have tried to snap a few pics.
The first two landings were no problem, but as we approached New Zealand’s Alps from the west, I was met with a truly delightful stabbing pain and a headache which occupied my entire head. Even my teeth hurt, all of them! I didn’t know what was possible! I realized how agonizing the pain was when a tiny girl in the cabin crew asked me would I like a lolly. Parts of my head I did not even know could feel sinus pain erupted as I accepted this lolly thing which I thought should have been on a stick but wasn’t. (It was delicious, but did nothing for the pain)
After surviving the landing and walking through a tunnel that made penguin noises (note to self: touch penguin in Auckland next week), I successfully convinced the passport check man that even though I lacked papers about my departing flight, I had one in four weeks’ time, and nobody took my tortillas, taco sauce mix, or muddy buddies (which I TOTALLY declared on my customs form, duh) from me. I could have parted with the taco ingredients, but bitches can’t touch my muddy buddies.
Then I saw my host family, yay! I pulled all of their gifts out of my suitcase (effectively emptying half the contents). They fought viciously over Spongebob…and then the ponies, and the halloween candy, and then the princesses.
Learned how to ride a scooter and successfully scooted myself to the fish and chips place with the girls, and then threw spongebob around for a while.
More pics will be up tomorrow, and I may get off my ass and add an image gallery plugin to this thing. My host family lives in the foothills of some hills and it’s spring, so there are a ton of flowering trees everywhere. I need to go shopping anyway…seems I lost or forgot one of my converter plugs and discovered my favorite skinny jeans have too many holes to be deemed publicly acceptable 🙁
Here’s to hoping my entire face decompresses overnight and feels much less like exploding. Ow ow ow ow ow.