Apples

Nov 24 to Nov 26: I got on a plane in RDU and headed towards Dallas-Fort Worth in Texas. I was seated between a Duke student and a UNC student. Needless to say I talked to the UNC student almost non-stop on the way to Texas. She had just returned to Chapel Hill, a few months ago, after living in Nelson, NZ for a semester. She gave me lots of advice and suggestions. My particular favorite was that I should go surfing at some nice little surf spot that she couldn't quite remember the name of it. At first she said "it's a great place to surf, my friend surfed there and really liked it because there weren't a lot of other surfers." We sat there for a while in silence and pondered why there wouldn't be a lot of surfers if there were good waves. Then she exclaimed "Oh, actually people don't surf there because are a ton of sharks!" Thus ended my interest in surfing this particular spot. However, I was very excited to hear that I could buy sweater pants in NZ. This is an item that Emily P and I have hypothesized about for quite sometime. I'm very excited about pants made out of a sweater material. It was pretty uneventful flying while in the United States. I got a little ill while landing on every plane, but there was no upchucking. Victory!

While waiting for my long flight from LAX to Auckland, I was contemplating if I should try and switch seats to get a row to myself. I sat there for 20 minutes and had an internal struggle on whether or not it was worth getting up and trying. Finally, I manned up and went to ask. It turns out there was one row of seats at the very back of the plane open. It was probably open because of it's proximity to the bathroom. I was worried about the distance from the bathrooms, but then I decided that sleeping quarters were worth any smell. It turns out this was a good choice because there was no smell and it was really comfortable. I flipped up all the armrests, spread out some blankets, propped up the pillows and passed out for about 8 hours. I don't think I'll ever want to fly any other way. I reached Christchurch on Nov 26, NZ day and time.

I'm glad mom warned me not to bring apples with me while flying. Even though they're a delicious treat, they aren't worth hundreds of dollars in fines. Whew. Apparently Australia's fines are worse.