International flight

This morning I awoke to my mother shouting through my doorway, "Ali, come watch! Quick! Come now!" (I know that seems like a lot of exclamation marks, but that's how she said it.) I turned over and tried to ignore her, but then, when I couldn't get back to sleep, I thought I might as well go see what the fuss was about. Turns out she had found out how to stream GYC online and wanted me to watch it with her. So I found a blanket and sat there watching Mark Finley speak for church service at GYC in my pajamas. It was a rather nice way to start the Sabbath, actually. After the service was over my dad and Ty had already left for church and so my mum and I showered, got ready for the day, and then drove down to the hospital to have a little church service out our own with Auntie Beth. She hates being in the hospital so much and especially can't stand it on Sabbath when she knows everyone else is in church but she is still stuck in the hospital. We had a nice time with her and she really enjoyed it I think. Then we went home and I finished my packing and then helped my mum get raclette toppings ready for lunch while listening to the GYC music concert streaming online. The rest of our family and my grandparents came over when church was done and we had an awesome meal. It was even better than the first Q. raclette-making with the addition of several new toppings. My grandparents were a little astounded at the whole process at first, I think, but they both said they really liked the meal. Then we ate my grandma's apple crisp and some ice cream for dessert. I was stuffed. We said good-bye to my grandparents until graduation in April/May and then finalized our packing. I snuck in several more minutes of GYC-watching with my mum throughout the last few hours at home.

We said good-bye to my mum at home and then my dad took us to the airport. We got there pretty much exactly two hours before our flight was scheduled to leave. When we walked in the doors I saw a huge long line up stretching from the Horizon Airlines ticketing counter down the hallway almost all the way to baggage claim. (I will admit that our airport is pretty small so it wasn't the same distance as if that line had been in say SEA-TAC airport or something.) We got in line and a few minutes later a guy from Horizon came by to talk to us about what we were and weren't allowed onto the international flight down to Seattle now that there are new emergency security measures enacted for international flights into the U.S. He confirmed that we were allowed to bring musical instruments with us as carry-ons, but told us that the only way we could bring our laptops with us on the plane would be to hold them without any case or covering or anything at all other than just the laptop, not even our power cords. Finally we made it up to the ticket counter and got all our bags checked. We could check our backpacks for free since we weren't allowed to take them onto the plane, so that was nice, but I was still kind of worried about the stuff in my backpack getting wrecked and ruined by the baggage handlers. By the time we got to ticketing our flight had been delayed 15 minutes because the incoming flight from Seattle was late. Once we had our boarding passes, we walked down to security and then said bye to my dad. He told us to make sure to text him if our flight got delayed at all. If it got delayed too much he said he was going to just call off the flight and drive us down to Seattle himself. Getting through security was a breeze, but then we just had to sit in the departure lounge with nothing to do. Actually, correction. I had to sit in the departure lounge with nothing to do. Bryn and Ty had their iPods to play games on. I only had a stupid phone that doesn't do anything cool. Eventually I got a seat near the White Spot restaurant which had two TV's showing hockey games in their bar section. I mostly watched the Team U.S.A. vs. Team Finland quarter-final game, but when that game was in intermission I watched the first game of a double-header on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, which was Calgary vs. Toronto. I hate both those teams so the only reason I was hoping Toronto would win was so that Calgary, who is in Vancouver's division, wouldn't get any more points. By the time we actually got in line to board Team U.S.A. was up 2-0 on Finland in the second period and Calgary was about 2 minutes away from beating Toronto 2-1.

While we were waiting there our flight got delayed another 25 minutes. Bryn decided this delay gave her enough time to order some food to-go from White Spot so she got a menu and found food she wanted and ordered it. When the food came I went over to help her and Ty eat it. Ty ate the yam fries while Bryn and I shared a Caesar salad and then we all helped finish off our random meal with a brownie and ice cream dessert. It was delicious. A few minutes after we were done eating our flight was finally called for boarding. While we were in line, a family right in front of us asked Ty if he really knew how to play the ukelele (He was just carrying it without a case or anything and lots of people commented on it all evening.) He said he could, but when older daughter asked him to play something for her, he said he couldn't cause he was carrying his computer, too. She seemed a little disappointed. I think she thought he was cute. Then she said they were from Hawaii and so the ukelele got their attention right away. (Later on the dad asked Ty if we were in a band.) We went through the gate in groups of 20 and then walked to our plane. When we got right near the plane we had to line up with males on the right side of the hallway and females on the left side. Then one by one, each person had to go to a security person and get patted down and thoroughly searched. They even searched through our carry-ons/personal possessions we were taking onto the flight. Then men got searched right there at the end of the hallway we were all lined up in and the women were around the corner right before getting onto the plane. Finally all of us passengers were completely searched and deemed safe for flight. We all sat around on the plane for at least half an hour with absolutely nothing being done. It was simply fabulous (and that was a highly sarcastic comment). The flight attendants kept saying that we'd get going in a few minutes, which was a gigantic lie. Finally the captain told us we were going to leave and then turned the propellers on just before 8 p.m. (our flight was originally supposed to leave at 6:35) and soon after that we were actually in the air. Bryn slept leaning against my back pretty much the entire flight while I stared out the window for any sign that we were coming into Seattle. After what seemed like hours, but was really only about 30 minutes, the clouds thinned out and I saw sprinklings of lights. Once we got near the town I searched for I5 and then followed that right through the city and picking out the Seattle Space Needle from the air. A couple minutes after flying over downtown, we were on the ground at SEA-TAC. Then we had to go through immigration, which took a little bit longer for me because I had to fill out a form for a new F1 visa. (I got a new passport this summer and when I drove across the border going to school in August the border official said I didn't need a new form or a stamp in my new passport, but this immigration officer didn't agree with that. It didn't take long to complete though and by the time I rejoined Bryn and Ty they hadn't even found any of our luggage yet, so it was fine. I thought it was interesting that the immigration officer asked me what instrument I played after seeing my violin case. When I told him violin he said, "And piano too right?" I looked at him in astonishment and said yes. Then he said his two daughters play violin and piano.) Then we got our luggage and went through customs, then put our luggage on another conveyor belt that sent our bags to the normal baggage claim out in the main part of the airport. We took the train and beat our luggage to the baggage claim so I left my carry-on stuff with Bryn and Ty and ran up to ticketing to make sure we would be allowed to each bring two carry-ons on our flight tomorrow. The lady there said everything was normal with carry-ons on domestic flights so I ran back down to baggage. By the time I got back Bryn and Ty had our bags and then we just had to get out to Parking and find the courtesy phones to call for a shuttle to our hotel. Now we're here. We rearranged items so that we had just the things we wanted to take on the flight tomorrow in our carry-ons and now we're just checking our e-mail and stuff before going to sleep. Tomorrow's going to come super early so I'm signing off for now. Write to you all again back at school!