YYZ - LAX - BNE - PER

5 hour 15 minute flight Toronto - LA
13 hour 30 minute flight LA - Brisbane
5 hour 40 minute flight Brisbane to Perth
= 24 hours and 25 minutes of air time.

Three boarding passes for my adventure

Two things I can't quite believe: 
1) That this whole year has been building up to my flight(s) today. I admit, I love to travel; I love to fly, airports and the whole shebang. However, over a day's worth of travelling and the international date line eating up a day of my life is seemingly a little daunting. 
2) I arrived at the airport, cleared customs, security and I'm now sitting at my gate 3 hours before my flight. I know, you're thinking, "Who are you and what have you done to the perpetually late Megan Underwood?". 


So, for those of you who don't quite know why the heck I'm spending the next 48 hours of my life in transit let me give you a quick rundown...


It was a Thursday evening around 7pm on a cold winter's night in Janauary 2011. The wind was howling, I'm sure it was snowing, and it was most certainly at least 20 degrees below 0. I had an assignment/paper/some form of work to be completed and in classic Megan style I was procrastinating. 


'What will I do when I graduate?' I pondered.


A few internet searches later and it was decided. An au pair I would become. I hasted to the kitchen to refuel on some chocolate chips and sat down to create the world's best au pair profile. I don't know how long it took, or how many refuelings of chocolate chips I needed, but I completed that bad boy and then decided (now at 9pm or something) that I should probably START that assignment that was due at 8:30am. I closed the website and got to work (bahahaha, not! I probably watched some tv online).


Fast forward to about 7am when I wake to check my classic morning websites (BBC, CBC, Weather Office, Hotmail, Facebook, Twitter and Gmail). LO AND BEHOLD, there are a ridiculously large amount of emails/responses from the au pair website. Everyone around the world wants me to come and be their super nanny! 


After class I sat down and went through all of those responses, checking out the family profiles on the website and weeding out the good and the bad (5 kids, are you kidding me?!). I sent of emails/responses to my top 3. By the end of the day I had a skype interview the next morning. By Saturday afternoon, I had a 6-9 month au pair position in Perth, Australia with a wickedly cool family.


So folks, that's how it all began back in January, and it's been building until this moment at the end of October that I'm finally heading down under on a plane (or three). Six months of au pairing for my fantastic host family and then one month of backpacking through Australia and New Zealand. I wanted to get lost for a while and I think I'm going to, but in a good way.


Read it and weep


ENJOY THE CANADIAN WINTER EVERYONE!!!!!!


With love,
Megan

Andrew took this one at Thanksgiving - warm and cozy with tea!