Goodbye Sydney

Early Wednesday morning I landed in Sydney where I spent two lovely days catching up with my greatest host family and a few good friends, wandering around the city, enjoying the sun and warm weather, napping in Hyde Park (I can tell that after waking up at 3.30am NZ time which is 1.30am Sydney time and flying back to Sydney, I was dead tired at 3pm...), eating acai bowls, banana bread and froyo for the one last time for now, having my last flat whites, getting a lot of funny stories, kisses and cuddles from the girls in my host family, feeling the sand under my bare feet and staring at the ocean. From the very first moment at the Sydney's airport I felt I've come back home and the only question in my head was "Why a hell I'm spending only two days here?" 

When I left Sydney after my au pair time I really didn't realise I was leaving cause I was excited about my upcoming travels. Now after spending two months away it felt so damn good to be back. And it felt so damn hard to leave all the people and places behind without knowing exactly when I'll be back. The whole morning I was holding back tears but after the securiry check at the airport I just couldn't help myself. Now it was official, I was about to leave. 

I'll be missing Australia, Sydney and Manly so badly. My everyday life in there. But most of all I'm going to miss all the people. It was such a great and heart warming feeling to walk the familiar way home on Wednesday night, see two cute faces at the window and hear happy voices "It's Hanna. Hanna is here. Hanna is back". And it was heartbreaking to watch small eyes full of tears when I walked to the car this morning. Thank god for Skype, Whatsapp and Facebook.

At the moment I'm up in the air flying to Singapore where I spend a bit over 3 days exploring the city and familiarizing myself to the fact that I'm coming home. The few hours at the airport were, however, quite chaotic: my luggage was too heavy, my credit card didn't work, my travel pillow got broken just when I was about to step to the airplane, I couldn't find my Finnish sim-card anywhere and so on. 

Qantas is, hands down, one of the best airlines I have flewn with. The 8-hour journey has been so pleasant despite of the crying baby choir. And it's me who is saying that, me who have been scared of flying and hated it so much. I've spent my flight watching almost the whole season 5 of Suits, great to meet up with Harvey and friends after almost a year! Every passenger has their own pillow, blanket, iPad, heaps of movies and tv-shows and a comfy seat. The food has been excellent and you get water and snacks like lollies and fruits all the time. My lunch included Indian vegetarian meal (there were three options), hand made dessert pie and white wine from Hunter Valley (one of the alcoholic option was Finlandia vodka btw). Just get to fly with Qantas is a reason big enough to return to Australia.

I can honestly say that it was the best decision of my life to move there and spend almost 11 months abroad. And I must start to believe in destiny cause so many great things have happened just because I moved to Australia, and especially to Sydney.

Thank you Australia! I'll be back.

Now time to plan my tonight's program for Singapore and figure out how to get to my hostel from the airport. 

Have a great weekend!

Hanna