Our first post from Australia !

It's been three days since we arrived in Australia now and it's time to post an update on what has been going on since our last post. After our last post, we packed our suitcases and our laptops plus some last minute packing. We went to the Schiphol airport around 13:00 together with our parents who wanted to wave us off at the terminal. Around 15:00 we arrived at the airport hotel called CitizenM and which is really nice. It's a smallish room but you got everything there and there's plenty of gadgets for the 30+ kids , so we weren't bored. Also free movies on demand and easy check in and check out ( all done with computers , very fast and efficient ) made our stay at the CitizenM very comfortable. We had a Burger King meal at the airport but they did have sandwiches at the hotel in case we wanted something healthier. At 19:00 we went to bed, the sound insulation in the hotel was so good that we could not hear the planes taking off 100 meters down the runway ( no idea how they do that ). I didn't get much sleep that night, perhaps I dozed for about half an hour or so but the stress of the emigration kept me up most of the night. That said, just laying on the bed proved to be enough anyway. We woke up at 07:20 and after showering and having a takeaway brekkie we walked to the terminal ( 3 minutes walk ) and checked in our luggage around 09:00. Our luggage was about 5 kilo's overweight but Singapore Airlines was very friendly and didn't charge us extra. In total our luggage weighted 75 kilo's ( and as emigrants we were allowed 30 kilo's per person ) and we had about 12 kilo's of hand luggage with us ( mostly the breakable stuff like laptops and mediaplayers and the like ). After checking in we met up with the parents in the terminal and stood outside in the fresh air for about 1 hour till we decided to go catch our flight ( which was scheduled for boarding at 11:30 ). One thing I never got used to in The Netherlands was the constant amalgamation of human presence. Wherever I would stand, there'd be 2-4 people within a minute and this "group effect" only got worse. After 1 hour of standing outside , I counted about 22 people who amalgamated around my presence. Strangely, when we got there, we were the only ones. I will never get used to it; it's typical Dutch herding mentality and you see it on campings too. If you see a group of caravans standing on top of eachother with wide space everywhere else , then you can bet they are dutch. Anyway, back to where we were : The goodbye's.

The farewells were hard. Our parents and Lex's brother were there to wave us off. I think I only saw my mother cry once before and that's when my grandmother passed away. It was a difficult goodbye, tears and quick jokes to 'keep the spirits high' all over the place. The queue was quite long and by the time we were at passport control, we lost sight of them. After passing by the passport control, we moved to the gate and grabbed a chair at the gate opposite of ours ( less crowded, but the same views ) and sat down for an hour and went to the toilet a few times : I've never been an easy passenger I must admit, however when I pilot something myself then I love it : I think the loss of control is what gets to me. Don't like trains, don't like planes ; never have and never will. We got on board the plane and after a short taxi we were off in the air !

It felt good to leave Europe behind.