G'Day Australia, It's Been a While

On Saturday 11th January, I began the reverse of the journey that I had embarked on one year earlier, which would this time take me 41 hours. I drove to Aalborg airport with my counsellor Alice, who was the one that had driven me home from the airport when I first arrived in Denmark. But this time, we were driving the other direction, her daughter Katrine was with us, we were speaking Danish and the European countryside outside the car window was familiar.

After a little confusion by the lady working in the airport, I was checked in to Sydney (when I should have been flying to Brisbane). When I explained to her that I was supposed to be flying to Brisbane, she said 'at least you will be in Australia, maybe you can call the people who will be waiting for you and get them to pick you up from the different airport', I then had to explain to her that wasn't really possible as there was a 12 hour drive between the two airports.

Then after saying goodbye to my counsellor and second host family who had come to the airport to say goodbye, I was off on the first part of the trip home.

We had a brief stop over in Copenhagen airport, where we got our tickets corrected and re-printed saying Brisbane.

We arrived in Bangkok at 6am (Bangkok time), for our 18 hour stop over. After running through the airport with another Brisbane girl, Elle who had the same problem as me, we finally had our bags and ourselves checked in to Brisbane. The stop over turned out to be quite nice actually as we got a hotel and could relax by the pool, have shower, lunch and a sleep. Before the next flight.

 

 

 

At the airport, we had some Thai food for dinner, before boarding the final flight. It was a strange feeling knowing that the next ground we would walk on would be Australian!

  

Although a lot of people tend to not, I really enjoy plane meals!

As we first caught sight of Brisbane while descending we all began to get quite excited and also nervous. The other people on the plane seemed a bit confused as to why we were so excited/nervous to be arriving in Australia, as we were talking in Australian accents. But as the plane touched down on the runway, we all remarked on things like how brown the grass was, how blue the sky was, how bright it was and how fast our hearts were beating. We were now in Australia once again and were about to see our families for the first time after one year; it was a strange and quite overwhelming feeling, not to mention that most of us had only slept for around 6 hours out of the past 45.

After going through security and baggage claim, we stopped, realising that just around the corner were our families. We stood there for a little while, put our blazers on, gathered some courage and all tried to convince someone else to walk out first. We ended up just walking out together.

For some reason, the tears came before I had even seen my family. Bryson was the first one to greet me, standing there looking all tall and grown up holding a bunch of red roses and wearing the Danish football tshirt that I had bought him. I think I scared him a little; the first time he had seen me in a year and I come out with tears down my face giving him a big hug.

 

After hugging Bryson I went to the rest of my family, hugging my mum who began crying when she saw me, dad, Caiden (who was a lot bigger overall) and then everyone else in turn. It was so nice to see them all again not just through a screen, being able to hug them and hear their voices clearly.

Caiden drove home from the airport, which was strange because he had gotten his Learner licence while I was away and I had never seen him drive on the roads before. My family had put up a welcome home sign for me, but other than that and a few new pieces of furniture and decorations the house was exactly as I remembered it. It was so nice to see my beautiful room again and especially my big comfortable bed.

I think I had been home for around 30 minutes before I couldn't resist it any longer, I grabbed my keys, told Caiden to jump in the car, and went for a drive. I cannot describe how good and free it felt to be driving again after 1 whole year, I must have looked like an idiot with the amount I was smiling.

 

The next day after waking up from an amazing sleep in my own bed, I walked out, said good morning to Bryson and started speaking to him. He was looking at me really strangely, it was then that I realised that I had just spoken to him in Danish. He thought this was a bit funny.

  

In my first week home I ate around 6 mangoes and countless amounts of Aussie fruit and vegetables, drove myself and my brothers to the beach (1 hour from my house) around 4 times, showed photos from my year (only getting up to June!), caught up with my friends and shared a lot of stories of our adventures in 2013, unpacked my suitcase and box that had arrived, went through my pile of mail and began enjoying all of the little Australian things that I had missed over the past year.