Hello everyone! Since I can’t constantly make YouTube videos I thought I’d start writing to fill up the time between when I can edit my footage so you know where I’m at during my travels in America!!
Let’s start at the beginning shall we? Not going to lie, it wasn’t off to a great start. I had to travel from Adelaide to Sydney first at 6am, so in an attempt to be able to sleep on the long flight, I decided to forgo sleeping any that night. I did one last stream to distract me and watched movies until GalactiMum came to pick me up. After a teary goodbye and a relatively quick plane ride nestled next to a big burly man, I was thrown into the hectic hell hole that is security in Sydney airport. I had 3 hours at this layover and I had only just made it in time for boarding my next flight. By this point I was a mess, having had no sleep, battling through security, and the overwhelming feeling of leaving Australia for the first time. It wasn't all bad though. In my emotional state, I managed to make friends with some older ladies and a lovely flight attendant who helped me through.
The flight from Sydney to San Francisco was not as bad as I thought it would be, and I definitely did not need all of the carry on entertainment I thought I would. I had brought with me a sketchbook, my switch, a reading book, and my iPad, none of which I used. Mostly I just watched movies on their in flight entertainment and gave my best attempt to sleeping sitting upright - which was a failure as I mostly just dozed here and there. It reminded me of staying a night in hospital where nurses and noises distract you from any kind of sleep. Whilst my neck pillow and noise cancelling headphones helped make it a more comfortable ride, sleep still evaded me.
After 13 hours, the plane landed in San Francisco. I had just under 2 hours to get through customs and security and catch my next flight but I was in high spirits after having achieved something I never thought I would.
That is until I went through customs.
I was lucky enough to be one of the people they chose for their daily quota of being held in customs. They took me back to another section, interrogated me on my intentions of being there, picked up my luggage and rummaged through it, even read my personal journal for a good long while, and phone called my Fiancé, Mitch, to check that my facts were correct. Safe to say after this fiasco, not only did I miss my flight, but I once again turned into an anxious mess. It was traumatic to say the least, while they were treating it as some kind of sport. Not the greatest introduction to the States. I was informed by Customs that I could hop on the next flight to San Diego free of charge, regardless of the airline, however when I got to my airline I quickly discovered this was not the case and that it could only be transferred through the same airline, which didn’t have a flight until much later that night.
I was on the phone to Mitch at the time who was luckily able to book me a flight a few hours later to get me to San Diego by the afternoon, as we needed to use that day to set up for TwitchCon and visit some sights around San Diego.
Despite getting in hours later than we scheduled for, and not having slept in 2 days, we were still able to visit the USS Midway, a place I’ve wanted to see for many years being a fan of ‘Top Gun’. - it was also the first movie Mitch and I watched together over Discord. Being on a time restraint we spent only a couple of hours there until we needed to head to the convention centre to pick up my TwitchCon badge and set up as much as we could at the booth. It was so surreal seeing my name up on the wall of TwitchCon along with Mitch’s, surrounded by all our artwork, that had been a fantasy of mine for over a year, but I never thought that the very next TwitchCon would be the one it’d turn into a reality.
We finished the day by having dinner at the Top Gun bar, another place I could’ve only ever dreamed of going to. So whilst the day started dismally and I’d not slept for a very long time, it ended wonderfully. I felt like I was in a dream and I looked forward to living the rest of that dream.
~ Scroll Through the Gallery ~
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