Today has been one of the longest days I’ve ever had. Quite literally.

Due to not having a job and generally suffering from insomnia, my sleeping pattern had already been pushed to something akin to Pacific time, so I didn’t actually go to bed last night. Instead, I stayed up packing and fixing stuff until we were due to take the bus out to the airport.

We made good time and killed time by walking around shops and getting breakfast (well, I had already had breakfast), before heading to our gate. You have to understand that talking about it as being ‘this morning’ just feels really odd, as it’s now getting to be twenty-four hours ago, but it’s still Wednesday here in San Diego.

The flight to Newark was uneventful. I watched Captain America and got in a couple of hours of sleep, killing my neck just a bit.

Newark was entirely painless. We had the nicest customs guy ever! First he complimented me on my hair, then he asked us where we were headed, and when we told him about the WFC, he asked us about that and told us about an Anime convention he’d come across in New Orleans. I think he was Hawaiian or something, that’s what he looked like, anyway. He was honestly just nice.

When we went through security after clearing customs, I got this TSA agent who sounded like Mr Rogers. He had such a sunny disposition it was frankly scary. Morten was less lucky, and got one who was short, curt and angry.

I was immediately struck by how many genuinely friendly and polite people there are in this country. I got used to polite service in England, as in pleases and thank yous and ‘just pop your card in when you’re ready, love’. But in general those people were polite on the surface, went through the motions and you could tell it wasn’t really heartfelt. But here! People are just so… genuine! I love it!

Another flight (only slightly shorter) and a shuttle ride later we arrived at the hotel, checked in, and had dinner at one of the restaurants here. (I had the best fried chicken ever, OMG!)

Now I just need to sleep… I’m exhausted. I’ll try to blog every day, though, so join me again tomorrow when I detail our trip to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and the beginning of the convention!