Well we made it. I’m sitting in Mesa Arizona with Katie, Darlene, and EJ, where the winter is just as warm as a Dunedin summer. First let me back track a day and tell you how our travels went.

(Kent I hope you had a good time at the PAL crisis center)

We left Christchurch at 4.50pm after saying goodbye to Kent and flew domestic to Auckland. Our flight was running slightly behind so the transfer to the International airport had to be a quick one. We made it 10 minutes to spare when across the airport intercom came the message "Paging Mr Jared Mitchell, you have left something at security screening". Dropping my bags I made the 5 min run/sprint back to the screening station where the security guard proceeded to ask me what I had lost. At this point I had no clue why I was there until he pulled out my card holder which contained my drivers license and credit card (whoops). He also had Katies bracelet which she had forgotten as we were in such a rush. "This is the final call for flight NZ4" was all I heard as I made the sprint back from gate 1 to 8. But don't worry we made our flight. The flight itself was fine, but the only good movie was Runaway Jury.

We arrived in LA at 10am Monday morning expecting to be in customs for a couple of hours, but to our surprise there was next to no security and we were at the rental car company 20 minutes after leaving the plane.

Driving - Well thats a whole other story. As the car is in my name and Kt didn't have her current drivers license here, it was up to me to drive first. All I can say is 6 lane freeways are fast, but fun. I have seen more truck and trailers in one day than in my entire life. We drove towards AZ for about an hour before deciding to get something to eat, so we took a random exit to find somewhere to stop. This is where the left side of the road thing got a little hairy. We pulled into a car park to turn around and Kt turns to me and said go left and thats exactly what I did, just not on the right side of the road. Oops. After that a unanimous vote was made to let Kt drive for while. We found a Dennys diner to have my fist American fast food experience before heading back onto the I-10 for the long drive to Mesa. 300 miles and lots of desert later with Kt still driving we made it to Phoenix only to take the wrong turn to Darlene’s. It took us 30 mins (half way to Tucson to realize that we were going the wrong way.

We eventually made it to Darlenes at around 8.30pm to find out that it was actually 9.30pm because AZ is on another time zone for the winter. As I mentioned its the next day now and we are safe and sound eating from "boy sized containers" and about to be taken on a tour of the area.

Addition by Kt

Hey all, thought I'd pop on and say hello. I think j is enjoying "the land of dreams". After a long hall across Death Valley (if you could see it you'd understand where it gets its name) and a few detours, we finally made it to Darlene's. As usual I was starving, so J decided we should get some food before I got too grumpy. Upon discovering that Subway was closed (see, not everything in America is 24 hour) we decided to adventure into the local grocery store, whereupon I discovered everything that I had forgotten I'd missed while away, and J wandered open jawed exploring all the "candy" and "huge" bags of junk food. No worries, I still miss NZ and the states has nothing on her, except better produce (which is mostly yours anyway) and bigger grocery stores. Well this is getting rather long and I'm sure you all have better things to do than listen to us ramble on. So I hope all of you are doing well. Kentles, your Pals havent' forgotten you and I know a big Pal who was quite sad for the first few moments on the plane, I had to be the man and hold back the tears, of course. So take care until later,love Katie

Jared (a.k.a fatti)