The Adventure Begins

Hey all,
I'm finally on the road and it's amazing. The snow and sleet rain attempted to slow me down in Chicago but I prevailed and it only delayed me for 40 minutes which just meant a bit of running in LA. The 15 hour plane ride was a little different. I thought I would have the luxury of an open seat next to me when a fairly overweight man and his 3 year old miniature bolted onto the plane at the last minute, dripping in sweat. The man also happened to have a dutch accent and talked to his kid saying everything was "little"....do you want some of this little cookie?.....I think you had to be there but it was straight out of a SNL skit. I was also fortunate to begin plotting my own version of LOST (I being a Kate type figure and saving people including the 3 yr old next to me and spearing polar bears....(disregard this if you haven't seen lost)) when the cabin lights were shut off for about an hour because of smoke in the galley. Needless to say I am writing you so things went swimmingly. It was a refrigerator malfunction.

I had a layover in Sydney. Enough time to see the Sydney Opera house, get burned, make some friends, and take a dip in the Hilton pool.

Back to the airport where I took a luxury flight to New Zealand....not only did they have little tv's but the guy next to me gave me his ice cream!

A friend of a friend, Doug, was quite hospitable and picked me up at the airport, offered up his couch, and been an amazing tour guide. Such amazing hospitality.

I climbed a volcano, Rogitoto yesterday putting some actual images behind much of my geological knowledge. It was gorgeous. Unfortunately, I won't have any images to show you as I was trying to get out of the way of a picture and gracefully tripped falling a couple feet down a volcano breaking my camera in the process. It's unfortunate but if I were to ever break a camera at least I broke it on a volcano.....cool, huh?

Today, I'm off to the beach, a hike and possibly surfing down sand dunes.

Love,
Elena

PS Enjoy the snow!