Day 1: And She's Off to New Zealand and Australia!

After about a week of complete anxiety about this trip, the kid is finally wheels-up heading first to Los Angeles. The delegates were excited and happy and sad saying good bye to their wonderful parents. Of course, at the airport right before she left, we realized we forgot to pack something very important.

Once they get to LA, the Nor Cal gang will meet up with another (or maybe two other) delegations and they will board Qantas heading south. They land in Brisbane, Australia and then catch one more plane to Auckland and they will get busy with Day 2 (that I will write about tomorrow).

Now to follow along on this trip, I will be posting information for the day they are living, which is one day ahead of us. So they fly all night tonight (thinking real time) and arrive in Auckland about 7:45pm our time on July 4th. But it will be 2:45pm their time on July 5th. The flight to Australia is a little over 13 hours long.

As usual, I am using FlightAware.com to track her planes and basically stalk her progress around the globe (I love technology - and this gets geeky if you want to know speeds, flight times, etc.). If you want to watch, (and seriously, if you do, what's wrong with you! Get a TiVo!), here are her flights:

SFO to LAX on American 1740
LAX to Brisbane on Qantas 016
Brisbane to Auckland on Qantas 123

Before they left, we had a "pinning ceremony" where we review the responsibilities and privledges these kids have traveling as People to People Ambassadors. It's moving and was a little hard on Shelia McKell (pictured here) as her son was just deployed somewhere - she doesn't know where - as he serves in our military. That's the pin, there on the right.

Katie was super anxious before the trip - mostly worried about making friends with other kids in the delegation. This isn't the first time and I was relieved to get a text from her just before the flight left that said, "Other people said they felt the same way I did and now they are all just coming up and starting conversations with me so it's all good. Everybody is so friendly!" Thank god. Now I can finally rest easy.

Oh! I almost forgot to tell you what she (we) forgot to pack!

SOCKS!

Not one damn pair. So before she left, I went into a corner and took my socks off and slipped them in her bad. More poor feet went commando so she'd have at least one pair of socks for her poor feet! I hope she can buy some along the way.

< My poor feet!