Flying & Airports

We’re currently sitting in LA Airport – what a hole. We’ve noticed that the people here aren’t exceptionally friendly. They all seem full of their own importance and while they do help out, they don’t seem very happy to do so.

Our flight to Tahiti was okay. I managed to put my foot in my mouth (not literally), within the first few minutes of boarding. Steph and I were in row 44 of 45 rows. We sat down, and I announced, quite loudly – “Jeez there’s HEAPS of room in these seatbelts. How embarrassing would it be to have to have an extender!”
Not five seconds later, the couple directly behind us nabbed the air hostess. “Excuse me, can we both have seatbelt extenders please?”
I spoke quietly the rest of the flight.

They had 8 movies showing on the 5 hour flight which just kept circulating. I started to watch Definitely, Maybe and fell asleep for the last half hour. No worries, I’ll catch the end next time it comes on. They stopped the movie half an hour before the end. So I still don’t know what girl he ends up with! Typical.

The 2 hour stopover in Tahiti was okay. The seats were comfy in the transit lounge, but there was NOTHING to do. It rivals Vanuatu for the most boring airport on the planet. We did manage to play half a game of scrabble.

The next flight was okay, but LONG. I slept for a few hours intermittently, but poor Steph couldn’t sleep. I woke up once due to the air hostess tripping and pouring a glass of water all over me. Super! We’re both pretty knackered, as its 7am NZ time and we’ve had very minimal sleep and lots and lots of doing nothing.

It’s quite warm here. We went for a walk to try to stop Deep Vein Thrombosis from setting in. Oh, and we paid $9US for chicken and lettuce wrapped up in a tortilla. Rip off. Won’t do that again. Steph was amazed at the nachos that people were hoeing into. The cheese is ORANGE. And, they were eating it at 1030 in the morning. Yummmmmm – fat and salt for brekky.

Oh, and Dad, we checked in for our New York flight all on our own. Plugged the number into the screen and chose our seats (yay for exit rows!). Steph did ask the lady if we had to include our carry on luggage in the number of pieces per person, and instead of answering nicely, she just yelled “ZERO! Zero. Zero.”

Our connecting flight to New York has been delayed, meaning we have had a 5 hour stopover instead of 4. Neither of us can wait to get there and have a lie down.

It seems that everyone here talks on their cellphones. Like, excessively. Even though people look the same here and speak the same language, the culture is already so obviously different. We’re thinking this travelling business might make us appreciate New Zealand and New Zealanders a bit more!

Right, back to people watching and listening in to loud American conversations. It’s a very interesting pastime!

UPDATE: We are still in LA at the airport, still without sleep, and the plane has been delayed from 1:20pm until 6:30pm. Should it not leave at six thirty, we have to make other arrangements. Possibly via Salt Lake City. Might be quite fun – ticking Utah off the list. Haha. This is crazy now – way too long without sleep. I was just telling Steph that Grandad “flyed” airplanes. The words coming out of our mouths at the moment are from some made up language. Poor Ben – we’ve been trying to get in contact but so far no luck. Oh well, all part of the adventure I suppose!