Our Journey to Austin

Today has been a very long day!

Everyone was on time at Brisbane International "this morning" at 9:20AM. All ready to head off on our adventure. I (Mr Blair) had our poster printed out and collected it the morning of our flight. Unfortunately, Officeworks had no poster tubes so Harrison's dad had to scrounge one up for us at the airport. It was certainly solid and promised to protect the poster but it took us a while to be mindful of having the extra item to carry. The tube was left at the x-ray machines (thanks Travis for remembering it) and again at the final screening (thanks Australian Border Security Officer for retrieving it). The poster did make it to Austin with us, despite our best efforts.

Our long-haul flight was comfortable and we were well fed. The boys found much humour in drinking their apple juice from the chilled wine glass the airline provided with dinner (yes mums, I assure you it was apple juice). We all didn't get as much sleep as we liked but the in-flight entertainment was certainly interesting.

Customs entry at LAX proved to be quite fast and easy. Once through, we checked our bags for our connecting flight and just had to wait a couple of hours before take off. Unfortunately, we were sitting on the tarmac for half an hour as there were plumbing problems in the faucets of the rear lavatory. But, once repaired, we were off on our final leg to Texas. The boys found it hard to keep their eyes open at this stage. To be honest, so did I.

We arrived in Texas and headed down to the baggage carousel. There we met up with the team from QASMT and my brother from North Carolina. We all shared the shuttle bus to our hotel - Wyndham Garden, Austin. After we settled in we took a short walk to T-Mobile and secured US SIM cards for emergency and data use. Now we're fully connected.

We had dinner with the teams from QASMT and JMSS and their teachers at the restaurant in our hotel. The students have forged a firm friendship and all look forward to working together.

This evening we are working on our presentation for tomorrow night telling everyone about Faith's version of the sensor project which, of course, uniquely includes the CO2 sensor. Our presentation is in support of our poster.

We are very tired and plan on sleeping in a little tomorrow then off to Austin Downtown to check in to the conference and scout out places to eat near the Conference Centre. Then back to the hotel to practise our presentations before our poster dinner with the academics of Students@SC.

'night y'all