Adios, USA!

1/9/2007

Today begins my adventure to New Zealand and Australia with Pacific Challenge (http://www.pacificchallenge.org). If you happened to read my other blog, you might recognize that this is the same organization that I used for my trip to Southeast Asia, which was a wonderful experience. This trip will likely be much more physical and not quite as much of a cultural experience as the trip to SE Asia, which is good and bad. Pacific Challenge has been offering this trip for many years, but this year they decided to create a pilot program called the "Pacific Challenge Ultimate Expedition," which is similar to the traditional trip to NZ and Aus but incorporates more physically demanding activities with more camping and less time in the cities. All of the participants were informed about the pilot program, and only the first 10 who expressed an interest were allowed to do it. Everyone else would do the traditional trip, which has been successful in the past. While probably the last time I actually went camping was in elementary school with the Boy Scouts, I decided that I would like to do the more outdoorsy pilot program. Time will tell exactly how "ultimate" it is.

Back to my day...I had a flight out of Orlando that landed in Los Angeles at 3:00 pm. Since I had a few hours to kill before I had to meet up with the group, I walked around the LAX airport for over an hour with a ton of luggage searching for a TV to watch the beloved Florida Gators basketball team against I think Arkansas. As you all surely know, last night the UF football team won the national championship. Unfortunately, I was watching that game in my living room rather than in Arizona, but a win is a win. Eventually the time came for me to go meet the people in my group. I'll give a brief summary of the people on the trip:

Me- I don't think all of the terabytes of my Google Blogger account can fit all the fascinating information about me, so I'll leave that up to your imagination (basically I'm a 22 year old kid enjoying myself before going to medical school - at least that is the current plan)

Philip- 21 years old; from South Carolina; graduated from Presbyterian College last December; headed to dental school in the fall

Kim- 24 years old; from San Antonio, TX; applying to medical school

Andy- junior at Southern Oregon University; on college track team

Lindsay- from Chicago; junior at Winona State University in Minnesota

Jen- from Minnesota; graduated from Winona State University

Chris- from Oregon; junior at Oregon State University

Eli- not sure yet; we'll be meeting up with him later in the trip when he joins our group in New Zealand

Adam- the group leader; graduated from University of New Mexico; teaches at Southern Oregon University; has led multiple Pacific Challenge trips to NZ and Aus

Well, that basically sums up the group. Everybody seemed friendly (we'll see how long that lasts). Our plane left at 9 pm for a quick flight of about 13 hours. The airline was Air New Zealand, and one interesting thing was that all the flight attendants were male. I overheard somebody ask them if that was the standard for NZ airlines, and they said it was just a coincidence. I guess I'll find out in two months when I fly back to the US if it really was just a coincidence...Anyways, the flight went smoothly. I got some nice sleep and watched a movie called The Illusionist, which was pretty cool.