So its December 31st and we’re finally here. After getting up at 6am on 29th December we made our way to the airport (7am)with Matts family (We’ve been staying here for the week of Christmas). When we got there we was greeted with the longest line ever for US Airways check in but thankfully cos we’d done our checking in online we got to skip that queue and go straight to a different EMPTY line and check our bags in, man did we get some dirty looks from that queue! :p The lady at the desk put nice big orange stickers on our suitcases saying Heavy Luggage. I think we’d managed to pack them so that they came to just under 22kg (the weight limit heh), no one bought us any Christmas presents that were too heavy which we was very grateful for.
She told us that we’d need to be at the gate for about 9.45, this is bearing in mind our plane left at 11am, security had gone up tenfold since the terrorist scare on Christmas day. So its a good thing we’d gone so early!
At about 8.15 my family arrived at the airport too, we all sat in an airport coffee shop trying not to think about what was gonna happen in the next hour. I had a hot chocolate from there (not worth the money), it was kinda rank. After supping our drinks it was about time to go to the departure lounge (sadly families cannot come to this part). After much crying and hugging and trying not to say goodbye as its not like we’re never gonna see them again we went to security, didn’t manage to set the alarms off this time when walking through the metal detector, so thought I’d gotten out of being patted down 
Sadly this was not the case as we got to the gate, we came upon two long queues one for women and one for men. the lines were basically another security check where security would pat you down and open your hand luggage and check it had nothing suspicious in it. The man line was moving along at a much faster speed than the women, I figure probably cos most of the men had no hand luggage or a small amount of it, whereas women seem to take all sorts with them. I think this took about 40minutes to do, we got on the plane at about 10.35 ish anywho so in plenty of time before takeoff!
First plane was to Philadelphia, 7hours long, it was a pretty rough ride we hit some really bad turbulence towards the end of the journey made me really ill I nearly through up into a plastic bag, kinda put a damper on the rest of the day. Plane food was meh as usual, I’ve decided I just suck at travelling god help me if I ever want to visit Australia, I might need a dose of sleeping pills.
Philly was ok, we had to go through immigration which always makes me feel uncomfortable/scared its really weird to see security staff wielding guns to be honest it is a bit of a culture shock. It was relatively painless had to go through some secondary checks, I think I must have had a miscommunication with the first desk about my length of stay. After that was another security check again relatively painless we got straight through that (we was worried for a short time that we’d be late for our second flight as we only had a 2hour gap) and collected our bags to send them on to the next flight!
Second plane was to our final destination San Francisco! 6hours this time, I tried to sleep through most of it cos sleeping seemed to make my sickness go away. No more security checks here as we was now on an internal flight. Flight was pretty smooth, we landed got our luggage and headed to the car rental place (we’re renting a car for the first month to give time to find a car)
We got this car:
It’s a Mazda 6. Matt isn’t so keen on it cos he cant get his seat the right height, I think its ok. Glad its not a pickup.
After getting the car we pretty much headed straight to the hotel we’ll be staying in for the next week and went straight to bed. We was so shattered, I think by the time we checked into the hotel it was 4am UK time.
I’ll probably update later about what we’ve been up to since getting off the plane!
)