Traveling to Australia... the journey begins!

I’m in Australia. I am really in Australia! It’s quite hard to believe after all of the planning – it seemed surreal for so long. I’ll be blogging about the trip for a variety of reasons:

• to have a record of the experiences
• to share the trip with family and friends
• to process what I’m thinking, seeing, hearing, wondering, etc.

We are beginning our Australian journey in Brisbane staying with some dear friends. While we are here, my husband is presenting at the Australian National Band and Orchestra Conference (ANBOC) about the music of composer Andrew Boysen. Next week, I’ll be traveling to Sydney where I’ll be meeting up with a group of Michigan State University students and we’ll begin our coursework together. (Much more on this next week!)

While we were packing, my youngest daughter came in and presented me with a small stuffed duck to take on the trip. The duck was quickly named Mimis (pronounced, “Meemees” after the pacifier the youngest daughter loved so dearly as a baby). Mimis travels everywhere with me in my purse and is helping to document the trip. Below is Mimis’ account of our journey getting from Michigan, USA to Brisbane, Australia.

We began our journey departing East Lansing, MI on the Michigan Flyer bus heading to Detroit Metro Airport.

Here I am on the plane that took us from  Detroit to Los Angeles 4 1/2 hours to Los Angeles.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out when we flew over Las Vegas – though probably isn’t nearly as impressive in this photo. I’m looking forward to my first visit to Vegas in November for the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Conference (NCTE).

LAX airport was quite a zoo… we waiting quite a while for a shuttle bus to take us to a different terminal so we could catch the next flight. We just made it and boarded our Virgin Australia plane. I enjoyed reading the magazine on the pillow & blanket, the food was also delicious!

After 14 hours on the plane (thankfully we slept for much of it) we arrived in Brisbane. Here I am with my new friends who came to pick me up at the airport.

More soon!

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