My flight leaves at about 7:00PM on Sunday. I’m almost completely packed and ready to go. All my flights and accomodations are booked as well. Nothing to do now but wait. All the roommates are now gone as well, so I’m all by myself at the house for the rest of the weekend (a very rare occurence)!
Since my sister has an inconvienent work schedule this week, she wasn’t able to fly home to visit the family either. Tomorrow, she is going to spend Christmas with a friend’s family who lives near by. They invited me over for dinner tomorrow night as well. That is very nice of them, and is especially thoughtful since I was feeling rather lonely due to the circumstances. It’s going to be my first Christmas / New Years / Birthday away from home! It’s all a part of growing up of course, but there’s something sentimental (and scary) about it being the first time, especially coupled with the fact that this is the first time I’m travelling overseas too.
I’m quite excited and wonder how on Earth I’ll be able to sleep both tomorrow night and on the plane as well. It’s roughly a 16 hour flight there. The longest flight I’ve ever had before are the short one hour hops back and forth between San Francisco and Southern California. Meghan, a veteran of these long trips, bought me an interesting game called Sudoku to help kill time on the flight. I’ve played with it a bit already and it’s quite fun. I’m also bringing along “Life of Pi”, which quite a few people have recommended to me as an excellent book. There’s also the whole (trying to) sleep aspect as well as watching movies. Especially since we know how often I see actual movies anyway. It’ll be like everything is new to me!
Another nice issue is that I found someone to sublet my room for January, courtesy of my friend Julie. A friend of hers is moving back to San Francisco after a short stint in Texas and is looking for a place to stay for a few weeks while she gets settled. It’ll be nice not having to pay for a room that I’m not actually using. Of course it’s almost like moving out, so I’ve been packing up a lot of clothes and other random stuff laying around my room and storing it in boxes. Furniture is thanfully staying though, so she’ll utilize that.
While packing up my room, I was able to fill up two full trash bags of clothes that I dropped off to the Goodwill this week as well. That freed up quite a bit of space. There were also a lot of things I was able to get rid of. For some reason I was apparently collecting rotten old shoes. I tossed out about 5 pairs of completely destroyed shoes that were hiding in the back of my closet.
Among them, were a pair of hiking boots that have been with me through thick and thin. It was almost hard to throw them away, and I wanted to keep them for nothing more than sentimental value (that must be the word of the day). They’ve been with me from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the top of the Sierras and literally everything in between, plus some (Death Valley, Basin and Range, Salton Sea, Owens Valley, Nevada, Montana, as well as the infamous Caribou Scramble – 2 miles, 2500+ft of elevation gain, 100 switchbacks). I really think that I’ve easily put a brutal 500 miles on the things. They’ve lasted me well over the years… especially for a $40 pair of boots.
Ah well. So long Hi-Tec’s! It’s a shame you won’t be sharing in yet another adventure with me.
In other news… I went to a currency exchange shop downtown earlier this week and pulled out some New Zealand Dollars, so I’m prepared once I get there. I have to say, we in the United States have some of the most boring money in the world. The cash from NZ is quite colorful and interesting to look at. Perhaps that makes you want to spend it less (riiiggghhhht).
