Finding Paradise on a 14 hour plane ride
Wow! I can’t believe it has only been 5 days at the Gold Coast. So much has happened in such a small amount of time. Well if I am going to tell the story the best place to start, as always, is the beginning. Well unless the beginning is really boring and can be made better by watching the movie version. Unfortunately the script for my life as a movie is still in the editing process so I cannot offer you a movie version. I’ll try to make it somewhat interesting.
Day one of my adventure began by walking though the amazing machine that was really a tunnel into the depths of outer space. I had to keep my wits about me as I turned and traveled to the right planet to make sure not to be caught and sent back by the evil but very meticulous aliens. Ok, ok, so that may be a little stretch of the truth, in reality I had to go through security and obey all the rules while I waited to board the right plane. It was rather uneventful except for the many different travelers I encountered, like the avid vols fan — who was very distressed not to be at Neyland at that very moment, a woman who was wearing what seemed to be a homecoming like dress and heels, and of course the mom with the 2 year old who toddled towards me as we made faces at each other behind mom’s back. Anyways I digress, traveling this far made me slightly nervous and apparently if I am slightly nervous I become friendly. So I got to talk to and make friends with the lovely lady siting next to me in row 5 of my first flight. She was going to Amsterdam, but lived in Knoxville. Its always amazing to me to think how many people you encounter in a day, but how few people you actually get to hear from. Makes me think that we should put more effort into saying hello and being friendly. But then I get scared and look at my phone too; pretending to do something important while the rest of the people around me have the same reaction.
Well flight one was lovely. Flight two was similar except I met a Polish gentlemen who was going to take a tour of Calfornia. Trying to communicate with our very different accents was quite a challenge, but I think we both pretended to understand each other equally well. Now comes the last flight the big on, the one I was dreading from the moment I decided I wanted to go to Australia. The 14 hour long flight.
14 hours. 14 hours. That is like more than all three Lord of the Rings Movies together. That’s longer than the first season of many TV shows. That’s longer than I sleep — ok sometimes longer, I do enjoy sleeping sometimes. 14 hours just seemed like an insurmountable length of time.
I boarded the massive airplane after many polite conversations with some other passengers to find my seat. My ticket says that I have the aisle seat of the three juxtaposing (yes I used a thesaurus for this word…) seats. The lovely lady came in and sat in my row, number 47 (of about 55- yes 55 rows of seats!) We were chatting. She was from Australia. I admit to her my hesitance of this ride and she agreed that it is quite long.
We continued to chat, ever in waiting for the third of our number 47, A through C row. You see I had asked to see if we had a full flight, and so had she. The attendant told us both yes. Next thing we know the seat belt light comes on and the safety video plays and our third person is still missing! — The crowd goes wild. The best part of this flight is our row had a missing person. I now had room to lay my head down in the seat next to me.
On this flight I watched 4 movies — falling asleep during at least 2 of them, 3 TV shows, 2 games of Sudoku, and used the plane restroom once. I regret this last number very much, because the wait from the time the seatbelt light came on at the end to landing and waiting for rows 1–46 to exit was extremely, and I mean extremely long. So there was a moment in which my biggest fear was of bladder explosion.
I survived the 14 hour flight! There should have been T-shirts. Ah well. I guess this entry is already long, and I am sure everyone is already checked out. I know this is not the whole week, but at least now you have a better idea of how the traveling went. By the way the food is about as good as everyone says it is. It looks really fancy, but tastes quite mediocre.
Blessings to you all!
Kristin
