Introductions- Packing, Work, More Packing!

Hello everyone! As most of you know, I am off to the great down under in 8 days for a 3 week fun and crazy adventure! I am currently thinking about packing as I start this blog...perhaps I will start the painstakingly long process of deciding which clothes I will be modeling in Australia sometime tomorrow :) I decided to start this blog at a suggestion from a friend who wants to know every detail and memory from my trip as texting will be turned off on my cell phone and Facebook will not be checked that often. Hopefully this will allow most of you to make sure that I am staying out of trouble (ahem Mom and Dad) and allow others of you to keep up with all my new adventures.
This whole trip kind of started as a joke last summer and I can't believe that it's about to happen in a little more than a week! Sarah, one of my best friends from high school, is half Australian and she and her parents, Mary and Dennis, visit Mary's home country every other year to see family and to just relax. Sarah and I talked about how amazing it would be if I could come along on one of these family vacations and we casually brought it up to both of our families. I'm really not sure how I convinced my parents, as this is the first time I am going on a far away vacation without them, but Sarah's mom Mary was totally for it. Eventually, both of our parents got serious about the negotiations for this trip. By the time I headed back to college at Washington State University in August, I was told that this journey WAS going to happen, as long as I understood that it would make up both my Christmas and birthday presents. I have always believed that memories and experiences are much more valuable than material things and so I of course agreed to forgo the typical and traditional presents of DVDs and Nordstrom clothes to travel with my second parents and second sister. My dad, the travel expert, and Sarah's parents have been hard at work coordinating flights and hotels since November (THANK YOU!) and I couldn't be more grateful and thankful to both my parents for providing me the opportunity of going to Australia and to Mary and Dennis for taking me under their wings for these next three weeks.
Here's the itinerary: My trip will start next week when we are scheduled to fly out of SeaTac airport and land at LAX. We will then fly out of LAX and 14 hours later, we will land in Sydney, Australia. So needless to say, we will all be exhausted by the time we reach our destination. Australia is 17 hours ahead of Pacific Time so hopefully jet lag won't get us too badly! ( Wishful thinking I know :) ! ) After a few days exploring Sydney we will fly to Ayers Rock in Uluru and eventually we will fly out of Uluru and into Brisbane where we will be staying for the duration of the vacation. I will be having quite the adventure out on the outback and hopefully will be able to blog about it every once in a while. I'm not bringing my laptop but Mary, Dennis, and Sarah will have one so whenever I have down time, be aware that I will share with you all!
I linked my blog to the picture website Flickr so, as long as technology does its job, and when I take and upload pictures, they will show up on your upper right hand corner so you can read and see my adventures! Feel free to comment or just read...I'm glad you're on this journey with me!!
Anxious and excited to leave, I kind of have a boring week ahead of me. I don't work (Nordstrom) until Friday and I work again on Saturday, so the week will consist of packing, reading up on Australia, picking up my sister Stephanie from school, packing, hanging around the house, catching up with high school friends and college friends, packing, and driving around the Bellevue/Seattle area. I canNOT wait until I start my adventure and I can't wait to have memories and stories to share with everyone reading!!

See you down under!