In the Land of Oz

Just in case you ever fly Qantas Airlines to Australia, you should know in advance that once the flight is 70% booked they stop doing reserved seating. After that, your seat is assigned when you arrive at check-in. We found that out after the Qantas agent booked our connecting flight from Houston to LA such that we arrived 1.5 hours before our international flight. If you’ve ever flown internationally, you know that it’s never something to look forward to. The thought of going through the longest flight of my life in a middle seat between two strangers was enough to make me think about jumping out of the airplane, so you can understand my concern at our flight arrangements. After landing in LA and double-timing it to the check-in counter, we found out that since my dad had requested 6 seats together if at all possible they had actually given us reserved seats despite the stated seating policy. It might not be parting the Red Sea, but God still does work miracles.

We arrived in Sydney about 10pm local time and took a taxi to where we are staying. It’s an old mansion converted into a hostel. They left a key and instructions in the mailbox, so we entered by ourselves in the dark. We flipped the lights on in our room and a quick survey of the room revealed a decent-looking room, 6 beds, a mini-fridge, and a spider about 5 inches across. There are 6 in my family, so it was either going to be John or the spider in the last bed and John wasn’t keen on sharing it with a spider, so we promptly dispatched the spider. That still didn’t give my sister too much comfort.