After one week

O.K. - so I have officially been "down under" for one full week. I left Kalamazoo on Tuesday the 29th, landed in Brisbane on Thursday the 31st, and today is Wednesday the 6th! So ... man, where to start. The travel in some ways was absolutely brutal but overall was not as bad as I thought it might be. Just trying to find the right friggin' terminal in Los Angeles was a trick as I bounced from building to building trying to find the right place. Once I did, I had the saddest feeling waiting around for 4 hours by myself waiting for a plane to take off in a very dark terminal. Anyway, that was that, and then it was on the plane for a 13 and a half hour flight from L.A. to Auckland. AND THEN ... I got completely screwed up in Auckland at 5:00 a.m. (their time). I was told in Kalamazoo, Detroit, and Los Angeles that when I got to Auckland that I would have to go through customs, retrieve my bags, recheck them, and get back on the plane. wrong, Wrong, WRONG!!!!!!! I ran around that airport, literally ran, after a 13.5 hour flight at 5 a.m. just to get back on the same plane without having to do all of the nonsense of checking/rechecking/customs that I was told! O.K., I'm over that. Back on the plane for a 3.5 hour flight from New Zealand to Brisbane. Keep in mind, I had a sinus infection and was pretty heavily medicated - the air pressure from the flight made my head feel like a basketball under way too much pressure. When I landed I could actually hear my heart beating because my ears were so plugged up! I'll skip to it ... finally, on Tuesday, yesterday, my ears totally popped and I could hear again - 6 days sounding like I was underwater. Anyway, I'm glad that's over and I am almost back normal, or at least my old self, which is not necessarily "normal"!