It's been well over a year since I have last regularly blogged, however I've decided to open up these pages once again to document travels and my life.
An update on things since then: I have finally graduated with my conjoint degree in liberal arts and engineering. I started learning French on my return from Japan and have done about a year and a half of it. J'essayerai d'utiliser ce blog pour pratiquer mon français, je pense. I've secured a graduate job starting in the new year, working in food manufacturing. And although I did one year of Japanese at uni on my return, I haven't been keeping it up lately and have started to get a bit rusty.
Accepting the job offer a couple of weeks ago I finally had license to travel - no more sticking around for job interviews and I'd have the money to pay for the trip!
It's no secret that I've always wanted to go to Canada. I go as far as to say, if I couldn't be a kiwi, I'd choose to be a Canadian. And so, eyeing up $1 reserve fare auctions to Vancouver all day and that eventually falling through, I thought YOLO and decided to book a regular fare. I wanted to travel cross-country via rail and so arrive in Vancouver and end in Toronto. I also found out I could stop over in San Francisco or LA for free, and so while I decided to choose SF in the end I'll be heading to LA anyway. YOLO, right?
Since then I've been spending countless hours researching and booking the places I'll be going to, where I'll be staying, how I'm getting to places, how to meet up with old friends from my time in Japan. It's been a lot to get on with but I've more or less figured out the logistics of everything. I still need to make a list of things I want to see and do in each place, but I have a few days left. That's enough, right?
One thing which got me excited again about this trip is flying on a plane and visiting airports around the world. You may already know that I have this recurring obsession with all things aviation. [If you're not into it then you can skip this paragraph.] I'm flying AKL-YVR with Air New Zealand on a Boeing 777-200 (not their new 300 series unfortunately), YYZ-SFO on an Air Canada codeshare (A320 - meh, standard fare), then SFO-AKL on a 747-400 (big plane, can't complain). Also flying LAX-SFO with Southwest (737 of some sort). While still not having been able to fly on an A380, I think the nice mix of aircraft and airports make up for it. I've been frequenting one of my favourite airline websites and reading passenger reviews. I told you I'm obsessed.
One mistake I've made though was to forget to reserve my seats online: and there weren't any window seats left on the Vancouver flight! :( I'm gonna practice my puppy dog eyes and try and convince the check-in agent to get me one. Or perhaps a free upgrade? Do they still do that any more?
Anyway, I will stop here and mention that amongst the flurry of last-minute travel planning, I had almost forgotten that I have a final exam for French in two days' time. I have barely done any study for it and so will try and squash that into my schedule somewhere.
More updates to come. Until then!
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