The next big step on my life journey: home. After 8 years I have now returned to the place which I grew up in, the place I will always call home. I have a month to cram in a whole lot of catching up with people and a bunch of sight seeing, not of the usual tourist type, but of all the places I loved growing up here.
I spent an awfully long time getting here. With 8 hours on a bus and roughly 24 hours in the air, adding in all the bits in between I had about 45 hours travelling, and only got about 5 hours sleep in that time. It was my first time flying with Singapore Airlines and I am pleased to say the experience was good. Service and food was good (good as aeroplane food gets). As is usual for me on flights I couldn't get to sleep and watched a lot of movies.
Landing in London brought a fantastic feeling to me, seeing the sights which I left behind 8 years ago. Then I exited Heathrow to the 30 degrees, blue sky, sunny afternoon. A stop off at Tesco's for a sim card and a couple of food items, and I was at my home for the month, grandad's house.
I managed to stay up until 9.30pm, and slept until around 7am, waking up a couple of times in between. Now at just past 8pm I am just beginning to tire again so I think I can say I have successfully beaten jet lag, as long as I don't stay up terribly late tonight!
With another brilliantly warm summer day today I had a good start to my trip. A pretty relaxing day with a few chores sorted out. I managed to leave my phone charger behind in Auckland so I went to buy a new one, then we got some groceries, and then went off to the farm which my granddad used to work at to pick cherries. He gets invited back every year for some cherries, among other things including the work christmas dinner, and I feel very lucky to be benefiting from that this year! We picked lots of cherries, ate plenty as we picked and brought a big bowl home.
After lunch my great aunt and uncle came round and we think the last time I saw them was at my mum's cousin's 40th birthday party, which was 14 years ago, when I was 7, so that was a good catch up despite me having been too young to really remember them from previous meetings.
I made potato top lentil pie for dinner since despite saying it is not right I spend my holiday cooking my granddad has accepted that I actually love cooking and he can expect me to do plenty of it while I am here.
Nothing planned for tomorrow, but friday I am headed into London to see Connor, and hopefully Georgia too... both people I know from NZ. Figures the first friends I catch up with are not actually childhood friends but highschool ones, but whether it has been 6/7 months or 8 years all catch ups I am sure will be fantastic.
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