It Started with a Bang (and a Bad Pun)!

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Well, I'm FINALLY HERE in Fremantle, Western Australia, now officially deemed the most amazing place on earth...but more on that later. First, I have to describe the CHAOS that was arriving here.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/qantas-bomb-threat/2008/07/19/1216163229812.html
Yep, that’s right…the link does say “Qantas bomb threat,” and who else could possibly end up on the ONE Qantas flight that had said bomb threat? I guess the upside is that we are all famous and made world-wide news = )
So, here is what happened: Thursday night I was in LA with my parents (I had just spent 2 days at the Happiest Place on Earth) and about to finally leave for the airport when I got a call from the ND travel agent. Our flight had been postponed due to a Qantas engineer’s strike. She said that she had never had problems with Qantas before…just our luck. So I arrived at 6:30am at the airport on Friday morning and although we were a little late to board, we were all still so excited to go to Australia! There were a over 50 ND kids on the flight because we have another study abroad program in Perth.
I took my seat on the plane and was randomly selected to sit next to….drum roll please….Mike Kelly. It just figured. We sat on the plane for a while, wondering why we hadn’t, I don’t know, LEFT YET until a flight attendant came on and told us that two passengers had checked in (and checked baggage) and weren’t on the flight. A couple minutes later, they told us that for security reasons we all had to get off the plane and go through security…again. Right. Because somehow between the two hours that I went through security the FIRST time and got back on the plane, I had managed to accumulate all sorts of contraband items. Mmmmhmmm.
We grabbed all of our carry-ons and walked off the plane. The airport terminal was deadly silent, as everyone was instructed to stop for our plane to be evacuated. I’m pretty sure EVERY SINGLE TSA officer on duty (ok…maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration…but there were a lot of them!) had formed a wall to the side of us (so we couldn’t escape?). They did not look very happy about it either. I felt like a criminal who had just gotten caught. So we went through screening AGAIN (they didn’t find anything…go figure) and sat back down at the terminal gate.
A woman announced that we would be boarding shortly (YAYYY!) and then about 2 seconds later that she was LYING (okay…mistaken) and she would “keep us posted.” So after about FOREVER (aka: half hour) of sitting in the terminal, a Qantas official told us all that there was a breach of security that was “escalating” and that the FBI (yes…the FBI!) had warned Qantas not to let our plane take off!
Okay…at that point any grudge I had against Qantas or the random people who didn’t get on the plane was long gone…they could keep me on the ground for as long as they wanted, who was I to argue with the FBI?
Our flight had been delayed until 11pm that evening (it was about 1pm at this point) so what better was there to do than GO SEE THE DARK KNIGHT!? Yep, there were about 20 ND students all traveling through LA with their carry-on luggage to a movie theater/mall to go see Batman. It was quite excellent.
We finally got back to the airport, played some Mafia, went to Chili’s (Qantas gave us food vouchers…yay free food!), and bought $10 airport internet (okay…that was just me). They moved our gate to the very end of the terminal and we went through the gate which led to…nope, not an airplane. We had to go down stairs and were on the ground of LAX where we had to dodge planes left and right (sort of) to make it to a shuttle…which would take us to our plane…which was 3 miles away. When we finally got to our super-secret-out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-gate we were all interviewed by agents before we got on the flight. Just a couple of very intimidating questions like “Where are you from?” Why are you here?” “Do you know anyone in this area?” etc etc.
And then we got on the plane and everyone cheered when it took off! And landed, for that matter. Yes, that was an abrupt ending but I actually have to go now (I have an adventure of a day ahead of me!)
More to come: I (already) got a job, Notre Dame AUSTRALIA, what Fremantle is like, our group has ALREADY gotten in huge trouble, etc etc etc!

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