murtys blog

murty said on May 20th, 2008

murty can has starbucks?

well i am here!
26 hours, 3 airplanes, 4 airports, 8 in-flight meals, 19 hours of flight time and 2 sore bum cheeks later, i arrived in minneapolis to a very excited and happy annika.

this will probably be a long blog, cos it is my first one actually being in america, how crazy! so quickly grab a starbucks hot chocolate, oh wait you can’t. cos you don’t have them in australia! [update: sorry! australia does have starbucks! have a cry!] but you do have milo… so grab one of those instead, and put hot water and milk with it as well, cos raw milo will taste a bit funny while reading my blog. anyways, grab a milo or coffee or tea, and sit down in your favourite desk chair and prepare to read the most amazing blog ever!

well i only started packing late sunday night because i am a male and that is what males do. so i only got half an hour of sleep which turned out to be really helpful. anyways, i headed to my parents and travelled to the adelaide aiport with them and met up with my grandparents and hayley and her family. check-in was straight forward and easy. which as a side note, was a huge surprise to me, just how easy everything has been. people make things seem so daunting, but i had no hassels at all the whole trip. which is amazing!
farewells was hard cos there were so many people to say good-bye to and it was hard knowing who to spend the last hour of my time in adelaide talking to.
but anyways, good-byes were said, tears were shed, and now murty will takeup poetry. no, no he won’t. but yes, it was hard to say good-bye, but it was also a joyful time. so hayley and i boarded and we flew off to sydney.

now, last saturday night, sam beales had his 18th birthday party down in town, so i took my new camera to take photos and remember the good night. but unfortunately, i got way to excited and while taking a photo, i dropped my camera and broke the lens. how annoying! right before i was about to head off to america.
[side note: annika is watching american tv, so stupid!]
but i worked things out with my parents, and they have organised to claim insurance on it.

so we got to sydney, and i rushed to duty free to see if i could get a new camera and they were out of stock! but they gave me the one off the shelf (which was fine) for a discount and chucked in a couple other things as well, which was nice of them. so i now have the same camera as i had before, but am $700 short until i can get an insurance payout.
so we boarded the plane to los angeles, and we had technical difficulties which delayed us. nothing like leaving for a 13 hour flight which technical problems…
the flight was relatively uneventful. the aircraft was huge, and they compensated by giving us small seats. fortunately hayley and i had 3 seats to ourselves, so we could spread out a bit. every seat has a small screen on it, with heaps of movies, tv shows, news, games and music.
[side note: tim and alex if you are reading this, i am watching volleyball on tv!]
all up we had 3 main meals served, which weren’t anything amazing, but it sufficed. i also slept for about 6 hours in total, which really helped in me not having any jetlag. hayley was less fortunate and didn’t get much sleep at all.

we arrived in los angeles and were preparing for getting through customs. hayley was worried because she had to declare tim tams and vegemite. but we soon found, all we had to do is line up for about 15 minutes, show our forms, have a fingerprint scan, have a photo, grab our luggage, line up again for 5 minutes, show one more form, and off we went.
[side note: volleyball is sponsored by crocs, i just lost all respect]
we then rechecked our luggage in to our next flights and were like… soooo, what do we do now? within 10 seconds, a guy came up to us and asked if we needed help. he directed us to our next terminals and told us where we can get food and internet and exchange money. was so extremely helpful. hayley and i were pretty keen to get something to eat and sit down.
[side note: if you buy a chevrolet and then eat 15 hotdogs, they will throw in free running boards...what the heck!]
so we headed to the international terminal and found the internet cafe, checked e-mails, then went and got mcdonalds. we were kind of freaking out, because we weren’t sure if were supposed to tip them or not… so we didn’t. (we found out later you don’t need to tip fast food places, only restaurants really.) the food was pretty much the same as it is in australia, except more fattier. i found the change i received interesting, because they have 1 cent pieces (pennies), so you receive the exact change.

we decided to go for a wander seeing as we have a few hours to kill, so we headed out the international terminal (where the food and internet was) and someone else came up to us with more information on where we can go and what we can do. we also got asked if we wanted to donate some money towards child abuse in america. so we did. as we headed out of the lax airport we got asked by like 5 other charities and organisations to donate money. (we didn’t, stupid stingy australian’s!) it took us about 20 minutes to get out of the airport and it was interesting just seeing america in real life for the first time. i was freaking out about the cars having the steering on the wrong side, then driving on the wrong side of the road! it was pretty surreal, because it was very similar to the l.a you see in the movies. big palm trees lining the streets, and even bigger buildings and hotels. we sat on the grass outside a hotel for a while and took things in, then headed back to the airport.

we parted ways and headed off to our respective terminals to check into our flights to minneapolis. i was a bit unsure if everything would go smoothly for me, because i booked on a website called ‘cheapair.com‘ and got my ticket ridiculously cheap considering i booked so close to the flight. but everything processed quickly and i boarded straight away.
this was the first time i was flying without sitting next to hayley, and instead i sat next to a lovely american and her daughter. they were coming back from mexico, and it was interesting talking to her about america and mexico and australia.
[side note: ooh baseball is on tv. yay!]
i arrived to minneapolis to a very excited annika, carrying a large piece of cardboard saying ‘lhrdl lhrdl lhrdl’. (those of you who don’t understand what lhrdl means, you can read about it here.)
[side note: annika came to australia for a year last year working at bethany church and working with young adults in the barossa valley. i developed a great relationship with her before she headed back to the states]
it was fantastic to see her again, and was great to sit down for a while with her and quickly catch up. i had my first american starbucks and we waited for hayley’s flight to get in.

we packed the car and headed home to annika’s place. i spent the whole trip freaking out about being on the wrong side of the road and how weird things were. we got a quick tour of the house, set up our beds, chatted online for a bit and crashed to bed.
i have now been awake for a few hours, annika is upstairs getting ready for this afternoon, hayley has fallen back to sleep (she is pretty tired) and the birds are singing outside.

i am not 100% sure what exactly we will be doing the next few days, but i’m really excited about meeting some of annika’s friends and seeing some of the country.

everything still hasn’t really sunk in yet, but i think it will be a slow transition into it. which is probably a good way to go.
i really want to thank god for making the whole trip over a safe and easy experience and hassle free. has made it so much more positive and easy to recommend more people do it if they can.
also for those of you who are wondering, it turns out i don’t have reception over here yet on my mobile (or “cell”), but i’m going to call 3 and see what i can organise.

if you want to check out my photos from the trip over, you can find them here. you can also email using the yellow icon up the top right of my blog, and i will try to respond, but no promises. if you comment this blog, i will also try to reply to any questions you may have.

i will keep you up to date with my happenings this week and hopefully more prayer requests and more personal feelings as well. until then, please keep the kids and families we will ministering to in your prayers.

love all you guys!
murty!

i will leave you with a video of my first experience at starbucks in america.