Good morning All, from the frozen Great White North. It's currently -26 celcius here. Oz sounds very good today

I'm reminded that I arrived here to live on Feb 4th last year (my goodness, it's ONE YEAR for me here already!!!) and the next couple of months brought some bitter cold windy days to get through.

I got a look at my ticket itinerary for the main flights to Australia, leaving March 7th, and returning April 3rd, via Vancouver and the States. San Fransisco change flights going, and Los Angeles coming back. SF will be a brief stop with probably no time for finding an outside smoking spot but coming back will have roughly 4 hours to smoke my brains out if I want to!

Its incredible that the Aussie side of this trip is all taken care of and sorted out. An amazing feat of cooperation, collecting, and coordinating, for all the places and people on the itinerary. Max and Kathy especially must be breathing a huge sigh of relief after being in the eye of the storm and taking care of the actual bookings and all, and now the main flights are taken care of I hope you two will enjoy relaxing a bit more!!!


Geoff is hoping to be able to arrange things so he can rendevous with me in San Fransisco and we can manage to fly together on the main Oz flight! Fingers crossed!

Now this end needs some more pulling together and organizing before it can be written in stone and Canada side can be booked and solidified. My passport (should be here soon) ... needs to be in my hands before some things can be taken care of, like travelers visas/ETA etc for customs (now both USA and Australia customs I'll be going through)

People who have never travelled have no idea just how much needs to be done and taken care of first before being able to get on a plane and fly off on a holiday or trip, until they plan a trip!!! Gotta choreograph everything! The more people and places, and transports, and countries, the more "paper stuff and redtape", the more fees, the more coordinating and working out details. Amazing.

I know a lot of you are old hat with this travelling biz, but I'm brand new at the whole thing, and it's a learn as I go how "not easy" it is to pull it all together and pull it all off ... and this from me who has no idea what others, or how many others, or even all of the WHO's, have done and had to accomplish to make this whole thing happen. I can only guess!

I can only sit back astounded and feel blessed by this MLU FORCE that is sweeping me along into experiences of a lifetime just because they wanted to do some great thing for me. (I know its actually really selfish of all of you because you all only want my frying pan and some REAL Canadian Maple Syrup for a REAL Canadian Breakfast and must suffer my company to get to the Canadian rewards!!! )

Life has an amazing ability to present the most amazing things out of the blue!

Karmen