Am I home yet?

I am now once again sitting in an airport departure lounge, this time it’s in LA, which for those that are geographically impaired, is part of North America – the same continent as Canada.

I am freezing (which isn’t helped by the frappacinno I’m enjoying) and am exhausted after having been up for the past 24 hours. Yep, I didn’t end up sleeping on the plane. I have no idea why because I was tired when we first took off, but for the 10 hour flight sleep decided to evade me. The upside was that I was able to watch the sun rise for the second time on the 14th. That was a novel occurrence, and seems extremely sci-fi ish to me.

It didn’t take long to become genuinely sick of the entertainment options available. I don’t know how ancient the system is, but it seemed as if we were viewing the movies through poor-quality VHS.

On a side note, I just had a mini panic attack when I glanced at the clock on my laptop, before remembering that I’ve traveled across who knows how many time zones and haven’t set it yet. I caught the shuttle to Sydney airport exactly 24 hours ago.

Anyway, brekky wasn’t bad, although I’m not sure the sausage was even made of meat, but it was edible. It was getting off the airport at LAX that offered up the most annoying of situations. With three major international flights arriving at the same time, and only 23 immigration officers on duty, the wait to just let them know I was going home lasted over an hour. It was then to collect my baggage, and through customs, just to check my bags in once more, and go through security yet again. You would think that with the number of times that I’ve been screened in the last few days that they would realize that I’m not a threat. At least this time I timed it perfectly and had no waiting. What a relief.

There was something very important that I had to do before settling down to wait for my flight yet again. Phone home. I know that by now I should be fairly independent, but it was killing me that I hadn’t talked to my parents in days, and the time zones finally allowed easy communication. It was unfortunate that the funds made it a little harder, but thank goodness for collect calls.

So now I had dropped off my bags, phoned home and made it through security once again. It was time for sustenance, since I hadn’t had anything since brekky, and it was now almost five. I was excited to see that Starbucks was offering half price frappacinnos, hence the mocha coconut frozen concoction that has made me shiver uncontrollably, but has tasted oh so yummy.

I did have an interesting moment at the currency exchange counter. I hate changing money there, but I was so hungry it was a nessecity to acquire some local currency. A young man and I got chatting about traveling, and he was really keen to hear about all of my travels, which when I compare to some of my friends is really nothing. I was then enjoying my dinner when he approached me once again with his friends. It seems I had become something of a celebrity and they wanted to hear more about my travels. It was a fun little moment that made me feel a little less alone in this crazy world.

I have now finished my dinner, my drink and have run out of things to write about. It isn’t helping that my fingers are shaking as I attempt to type due to the cold. I am also starting to see double as exhaustion is starting to overwhelm me. I have been awake for about 27 hours now, with perhaps a total of 2 hours of cat naps. It might have been a silly idea to get a drink that had caffeine in it, although falling asleep now and missing my flight would be a bad situation. So I’ll stay awake for another hour and a half until I can finally collapse in my seat and get a good 3 hours of sleep in.