Flying

29 hours and 30 minutes; the amount of time it will have taken to arrive in Rome counting from the moment our plane left Brisbane.

I am writing this post on the last leg of our flight to Rome, but one of the many things I have learnt since I left the country is the Emirates wifi is not free :( So it will probably be posted much later, from Rome.

Although our flights were planned to be fairly peaceful with only two stop-overs lasting for four hours each, a combination of things managed to change the ease of our travel. Firstly, the "wet and wild" weather (to quote Brisbane airport) caused our flight from Brisbane to depart an hour and a half late. Saying goodbye in Brisbane was, as expected, a tearful event. But looking back on it now, I don't think I would have had it any other way:)

Family shot at Brisbane Airport

The last few minutes before I boarded my flight to Sydney

Saying goodbye to Molly

Boarding

Our flight to Sydney was further delayed when, due to the bad weather, we had to hold in the sky near Sydney for an extra hour. This meant that, by the time we got off the plane we only had about an hour and a half to collect our luggage, get a bus to the international airport, check in, get through security, and board our next flight to Dubai. Yet somehow, while we were waiting for our baggage, we managed to meet Amanda Keller!

Australian TV Personality Amanda Kelly was on our flight from Brisbane to Sydney! :)

Short on time after collecting our luggage WEP decided to call a Maxi Taxi to take us to the international airport in Sydney, where the kind Chinese driver told me all about the wonderful "trolley busses" I will find in Milan. Once off the taxi, we ran through the check in, security screening (where I was tested for explosives for the first time in my life!) and to our gate where we, completely out of breath, met up with 10 other students and all 18 of us boarded our flight to Dubai.

The pretty Emirates flight attendant

My first ever flight on an Emirates jet was incredible. For some reason, something more to do with the delays from the weather, our flight was changed to stop over in Singapore for a re-fuel before continuing onto Dubai. The flight from to Singapore, plus the stop over at Singapore (where we did not leave the plane), plus the flight to Dubai all added up to about 16+ hours, although it felt more like 3 days. I have to say, while all of us were very tired, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole flight! I can't tell how much sleep I got, but it was certainly at least 5 hours!

Emirates is amazing with their movies and free socks and food and stars on the ceiling and cameras outside the plane and pretty pretty flight attendants, so I spent the whole time excited, less about exchange, and more about how incredible the A380 and Emirates service is. We were even lucky enough to have some of the flight attendants take some Polaroid pictures of us and I got to wear the pretty Emirates hat!

The fun and games of the flight however was interrupted when we landed in Dubai, late as always. We had an incredible early-morning view flying into Dubai, but once we left the plane, we were hot on our feet. Lead by a very kind Arabic man we sprinted from our plane across the airport to a train which took us to a lift with a waterfall which took us upstairs to our gate and straight onto our plane! However once boarded, buckled and ready to take off, a kind announcement informed us that due to air traffic our take off would be delayed by 20 minutes. But I suppose I'll forgive the pilot, because he had an Australia accent and said his name was Gavin.

The view of Dubai from my window of the A380

Going up the elevator in Dubai next to a waterfall wall

So now, at this moment, after watching the Lizzie McGuire movie one last time before finally experiencing Rome in the flesh, myself and the 17 others with me are just about jumping out of our skins with excitement. Fighting off the tiredness we have now as it nears 9PM in Brisbane, we are just about glued to the live map of how far away we are and the windows from which we have been able to see snow covered mountains and towns of Turkey and Greece!

The snow-covered mountains from our window

A panorama of the flight to Rome from my seat

In Rome we will meet with 10 others who took a different flight from Melbourne, and tomorrow the final girl from Queensland who missed our flight due to the flooding will arrive, bringing the grand total of Australian Exchange Students from WEP who will spend the next 4 days exploring Rome to 29.

I suppose you could say we're excited

Georgia, Charlotte, Ellen, Anna and Marcus

The wonderful group of people I flew with