Arrived. Finally.

Just arrived at where we're staying in Santa Barbara after a delayed and rather circuitous journey. Our flight from Auckland was delayed so much that we thought we might end up in a hotel for the night, there was a computer crash or something. Thankfully they managed to fix it and we ended up leaving at about 1am.
Once we were on the plane I watched Precious, ate dinner (some form of corn fritter I think I've had for every single vegan meal I've eaten on Air New Zealand) and then fell asleep drooling on Ruben. Ruben didn't appreciate me contributing to his already impressive drool stain and I woke up half falling into the aisle when the nice flight attendant tried to push a trolley into me. Once rudely awoken via trolley there was only about 2 and a half hours to go until we landed. I watched Made in Dagenham and ate breakfast (some type of hashbrown/corn fritter love child with vegetarian sausages of dubious origin) but due to my screen freezing half way through the movie the closing scene was playing right as we landed on the tarmac. I was too busy feeling emotional and empowered by the feminist struggles of 1960s female Ford workers to look at the view as we landed. Also, couldn't see through my tears. Just fyi: really good movie.

We got to sneakily go through the US citizens line with Kevin which was nice. US border control took my fingerprints and what has got to be the most unflattering photo of me to ever exist. I don't think I would have minded if he wasn't so good looking, I felt like I was letting him down by being pasty and tired and bleurgh.

Once we'd got through customs we got our luggage and went to wait for the shuttle to take us to the rental car company. Apparently mum chose the company with the least frequent shuttles so we sat there for about half an hour while a family with about four pieces of luggage apiece struggled by and left one of their bags behind. I found a TSA officer to take the bag because mum was panicking that it was a bomb.
I told her that small Japanese men with babies don't tend to leave bombs but my profiling didn't seem to help. Anyway, after the bomb dog (what a cool job btw) sniffed it and confirmed my belief that small Japanese men with babies don't leave bombs they took it away and we went to get our rental car.

About an hour into what was supposed to be a two hour drive we had moved about 1km and I was ravenous. We made a very unglamourous stop at Pizza Hut (the only place we could get to off the freeway) to have our first experience of US fast food. Everything is bigger, even the water.

Apparently "no cheese" was a difficult concept to grasp for the waitress and so my pizza took forever and I ended up eating it in the back of the car/getting it all over the white seat fabric. Oops. After I ate an entire pizza I fell into a food sleep but my parents, obviously overwhelmed by the abundance of choice of radio stations, had chosen a Jewish station that played Yiddish songs and poems interspersed with comments on the Jewish faith voiced by Leonard Nimoy. I had some weird freaky Yiddish song dreams.

Couple hours later and we've made it to the address of where we're supposed to be staying, we've picked up our keys from the office and now we've just got to find our house. After about 10minutes of driving round the dark complex, Ruben comments that there are no other cars here. Huh. Then we start to notice that the only buildings we see have "Caution. Do Not Enter" signs on them. Huh. At this point we are all exhausted and pissed off at each other. After passing around/grabbing the map off each other I have a flash of inspiration and wander off to where I think it is. Turns out it is a lot darker than I realised and I have no idea where I am. Huh really clever Tash. Actually after a couple minutes of heavy breathing, running, tripping and imagining all the places rapists could come out of I find our house. Huge house, only us in it. Still sharing a room with my brother. Awesome.

Ok tapping out for tonight, will do some adventuring tomorrow and probably write about it :)