So at the moment I'm in Dubai and in a few hours I'll be boarding a flight bound for Tallinn, Estonia. I've wanted to go since 2002, and unlike some other leave trips, I'm starting to get really excited/nervous about the trip for some reason. Similar to what I felt like on my first layover to London - now if I get a London I just see it as a Marks and Spencer's run than a 24 hr holiday. The spring in the step is back :-)

I've been busy with flying lately, more so than I've ever had since I started this job. I'm going to list my trips in point form to show you all how crazy it really has been here.

• Frankfurt on the 15th, which I swapped a Kuwait turnaround for. Arrive back on 17th at 5am.
• Beijing on the 18th, departing 3am approx, so I had less than 24 hrs rest for the trip. I was so shattered I spent a good 18hrs in the hotel catching up on sleep. Arrive back on 20th at 5am.
  
• Leave for Perth on days off on 20th at 10am. So I had about 5 hours to go back to my apartment, shower, re-pack my suitcase and roll aboard, check in and shop for Duty Free goodies. Loads were light so I managed to score 4 Y/C seats to myself and had a bit of a snooze. Arrive back on 25th at 1pm.
  
• Leave for Melbourne on 26th at 2am. I'm surprisingly rested for this flight, sleeping 5 hrs on the plane and also 6 hrs in my apartment before the alarm went off. Also slept 2 hrs in the bunks during my break (which NEVER happens)
• Came back this morning at 11am. Leave at 10pm to go to Tallinn/Helsinki for holidays.
  

The next time I'll actually spend a full 24 hrs in my apartment will be September 8th, then on the 9th I leave for Paris (woohoo!) so as you can see things have been hectic. My apartment is totally trashed - clothes everywhere from the crazy amount of packing and re-packing and washing without time to iron. I cleaned the fridge before I left for Frankfurt so that's looking bare, but the freezer is stacked with food brought from home - silly stuff like raisin toast and mango smoothie in-a-bag. As a result whilst on my Melbourne trip the freezer popped open as it was so packed and ruined a lot of my pork stash, so I cleaned that up today.

The trip to Perth was very last minute - work had given me 4 days off on my roster, and I had leave coming up that was being spent elsewhere. I received a text earlier in the month from my brother letting me know that I was going to be an auntie, so the need to be with family took over and I booked a flight home. The trip was good, cooked some dinner for my Dad, saw Mum a few times, shopped for food to enjoy back in Dubai, and caught up again with Traytable which was awesome. As far as blogger meet ups go I've now seen her more times than Ben, which is strange considering we're not in the same city.

So that's all that's been happening really. Of course at the moment it's Ramadan in Dubai (part of the reason why I'm spending so little time here) so roads around my apartment have been blocked by cars that have been randomly parked. There's quite a large mosque behind my building and I think both Dubai and Sharjah residents go there for prayer, so coming back from a 14 hr Melbourne flight this morning and seeing the roads blocked with cars (and people praying outside the mosque due to it being so full) was a first for me.

Stay tuned for photos!

Labels: Layovers, Random Thoughts

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