We have love for our families

After spending the night at LAX without any sleep whatsoever, we stood in line at the Air Canada booth. I have now flown several airlines and this particular one has stood out in a negative way. I am aware that with cheaper airlines, passengers have to pay additional fees for checking bags, food, drinks etc. This airline however, was not cheap and they were asking for fifty bucks for our bags. So I asked for the fee to be waived since we did not know about the new rule (that started a few days prior to our purchase). They said no so I called their head office. I spoke with the agent over the phone for over one hour and they gave me a huge run around before they said they would not waive the fee. I again tried to speak with the agent in the airport who was extremely rude and degrading. She caused a lot of problems for us and we felt harrassed and angry. We even asked if they would just take our one pound bag (with our few liquids in it) for a reduced rate. The lady refused saying that it would be $25 per bag regardless of the size of it. So we ended up throwing out two huge cans of OFF that were brand new and a bottle of shampoo and we carried our bags on the airplane. They also charged for all refreshments as well as the ear phones to hear their movies. Not impressed.

After the crappy Air Canada treatment, we were pulled aside at YVR for extra security measures where we were treated like criminals. They sent us to another section where Tyson was the only caucasian person. I tried to escape to go to the bathroom for one minute but I was sent back and had to be escorted. It was an all around strange, demoralizing and annoying experience. After the hold up we finally got to arrivals where we were greeted by our warm and loving parents as well our our twin baby niece and nephew. Everyone was happy until we stepped out into the minus four outrageously cold weather in our summer clothes. We all drove home and had a lovely weekend visiting with friends and family.

On Friday we ran some errands and swapped out some of our things. Tyson and I split up for the night and each stayed with our respective families. We cuddled our parents and slept well in clean comfy beds after clean hot showers. We ate too much of all our favorite foods and drove around the city. Throughout the weekend we visited Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles who came to see us.

We had a perfect appy night get-together with all our friends and families at Tyson's parents house on Saturday night. It was neat to see everyone and catch up. During the day we went to the mall to check out the holiday madness and do some shopping. We went out for sushi which is one of the foods we have missed the most. We collected more currencies for the new countries we are going to, and bought some extra supplies for our travels.

On Sunday we hung out with family some more and I went to a Bahai feast and caught up with the community activities. On Monday we surprised our nieces by picking them up from their school. We
watched Christmas movies and we had a pizza party for Tyson's birthday at his parent's home.

Tuesday morning we left the country. It was very difficult to say good bye once again, this time for much longer than the first. I somehow lost my dreading tool so we looked all over the house and eventually had to stop to buy a replacement on the way to the airport. We also went to the wrong departure gate, and got pulled over at security because we had a knife in our carry on. This, in combination with lengthy teary good byes with our parents caused us to have to jog to the gate for boarding. I wanted to make a last minute phone call to our parents but calls cost 50 cents now and I only had one quarter. Although this good bye was not as difficult as the first, it still sucked.

Our flight was comfortable but I reccomend if anyone has ever wanted to watch the movie "Friends with Benefits" to NOT. I tried really hard to give it a chance but it's truly a bad movie. In LAX I got pulled over for extra security AGAIN and I do not mean to be negative but once again there were no caucasians in this "random" extra screening either. Also the Los Angelas airport is the only one we have been to that does not have free wifi. We had ice cream and hamburgers for dinner and boarded our eleven hour flight to Fiji.
We flew Air Pacific in a giant airplane called a 747. It seats over 500 people and it has two levels. It was crazy, I took some photos of the outside but I am not sure if they will do justice to the size of the structure. It was a comfortable flight with dinner and breakfast served as well as individual televisions for movies. Free checked bags, headphones, cans of pop, blankets and pillows too! All the stuff that we used to take for granted but Air Canada slapped fees on. We did manage to get into a bit of a quarrel with the lady behind us who insisted on screeching out every time we tried to inch our chair back or move in our seats. I did turn around and politely mention to her that she is not the queen and we have the right to be comfortable as well. After and in between interactions with this broad we did sleep quite well.

We had a lay over in Fiji and the country looks (from overhead and pictures) beautiful! Their dollar is worth about half the American dollar so it's affordable as well. The fijians that I spoke to said that the climate and scenery is much like Hawaii. There were many Canadians and Americans on our flight so I guess our representation in the Australian tourism will be greater than that of South or Central America. On my long walk back to my seat from the bathroom on the plane, a girl stopped me and asked if I was Baha'i because of my necklace. She was a Baha'i from Oregan meeting her boyfriend in Australia. It was nice to talk with her for a little while during the flight.

"If we are not happy and joyous in this season for what season shall we wait"