To airport, to airport, to see a Japanese Tree.

Today has been an exciting, stressful, nervous kind of day! With the last day of term, I was incredibly sad to say goodbye for two weeks to all my beautiful students. Alas, I remembered I have a blog to update them and keep in touch! Yay!

So guess what!? I’m on the plane! Yup, I am currently about to fly out of Melbourne and we are on our way to Tokyo! And yes it is pasted midnight and is about 12:30AM on Friday the 25th March (Melbourne Time)

I thought that since I’m going to be in the air for another 8 hours, I would update you with the process of last minute rushing to pack my bag this morning, driving to the airport, checking in, and best of all…the wait to board the plane! Be warned its a fairly long post!

6:30AM – My usual wake up time. Today I had to pack away the last minute bathroom essentials; hairbrush, toothbrush, roll on deodorant (you’re not allowed to bring aerosols!), and my face wash. 

Suitcase all packed!

Sarsha had left me comments on the blog this morning so while I sat and drank my coffee I read and replied. I had to try and not get too sad, because I was reminded of how much some students will miss me and I’ll miss them! 

7:45AM – Normal arrive at school time. Yup I like to be early so I don’t rush my day. However today was my quick rush to print the itinerary and airport flight information to make it quicker and easier to check in when we arrive at the airport.

9:00AM – School started. As any last day of term normally is…the students were all just as excited for the holidays as I was! Ask any of them and they’ll tell you that I was super hyper and dancing [most] of the day! 

I got given a beautiful card from Sarsha with a chocolate bunny, a big favourites box from Kayleb and a countdown card from Jelena and Fiona! I will include the countdown in my daily posts!

My gifts & cards!

  

The countdown back to Australia

 

3:49PM – I left Wooranna Park for the last time before the beginning of Term 2. I was overwhelmed with hugs and goodbyes which made it so hard to leave! 

5:00PM – Time to weigh my luggage and do a final check! My hand luggage (the bag that can come on the plan with me) weighs 6.6KG out of the 7KG I am allowed. My checked luggage (the suitcase that goes in the bottom of the plane) is only 14.3KG out of the 25KG I was allowed! 
 

Packed and Ready!

See I told you students you wouldn’t be under 20KG to fit in my suitcase! Haha

6:30PM – Time to drive to the airport! While the car was packed with suitcases, Sparrow travelled in the car with us! Instead of paying for our car to stay in the long-term parking, my mother in-law and father in-law drove us up!

 

To airport, to airport…

 

7:30PM – We arrived at the airport. We sat down and looked at some shops to pass the time.

9:25PM – Our check-in time was opened. This meant we could exchange our booked flights for a pass and could check in our suitcases. However from the beginning we had issues! Half way through our exchange the mchine stopped and gave us an error: “Sorry this machine is out of order”! We had to get assistance and the lady was very kind and printed our baggage stickers.

Boarding pass & Passport … check!

We then could move in and actually put our luggage on a conver belt and it gets taken to the planes!

 

Bye Bye luggage

 
The next part was customs! I was totally scared and nervous after hearing all the things that happen on Boarder Patrol. As we walked in I tried to take a photo and I didn’t know this was illegal! A man pulled us aside and said he needed to conduct a chemical check. He used a small object that looked like a metal detector and waved it over our bags and bodies. He warned me that I could have been fined over $5000! Lucky he let us pass and we also got to skip the big que for the next section of customs.

This part required our bags to go through a scanner. I had to take my laptop out, phone and the small liquids I was allowed to bring. While the bags went through the machine I too had to stand in a machine and be x-rated for metals and hidden objects! It was a little scary but it was okay!

The final stage was a passport check where a machine scanned our passports and then took a photo of us to make sure it was the same person. Overall this too us 40 minutes to get through! No wonder they say check in three hour before hand.

10:10PM – It was now time to relax and kill time until we an board the plan. We sat in Hudsons Coffee and watched the Thai Plane be loaded with its bags. Jordan played his new Zelda DS that came out today, while I wrote in my daily log and drank coffee. Thankfully I had free WIFI and I could listen to my KPOP playlist that Victoria, Johanna, Kohu and Rhythem set for me! 🎶

 

Hyrule Warriors on the new 3DS

  

Coffee!

 

The last part of this blog post is informing you that at 12:25AM we boarded our plane!! 

Awaiting take off