On Sunday after church we took Aonghas to the airport as he was leaving for Atlanta for nine days. His school has gotten sponsorship to pay for him, several other students and a couple of teachers to travel all the way there to check out some robotics competition being held so they can get an idea of what to expect when they compete in a similar competition in New Zealand later this year. Apparently there are very few schools participating, with most of them being private schools or top public schools such as Kings College. Carmel, Auckland Grammar and Westlake, with Rutherford College being the only West Auckland school and possibly the lowest decile???
Anyway when Hamish and I got home from church Aonghas was in a mad rush trying to do heaps of last minute packing. Our mum also went out to buy some last minute stuff for him. He had to be at the airport by 5pm and it was now about 4pm! Our mum arrived and we all jumped in the car and left for the airport.
When we got there the others had already lined up at the check-in counter and Aonghas went over and joined them. They slowly made their way to the front and after a while got their luggage sorted. We went upstairs to a cafe to wait around for a while. My mum, Hamish and I went over to McDonalds to buy some food for ourselves and Aonghas when I got a phone call from Aonghas telling me they were about to go through the departure gate!
We rushed to the departure gate but were too late to give Aonghas any food. He had to go, and we ended up eating the McDonalds ourselves!
We watched from overhead as they made their way through the duty-free shops and just as they disappeared from sight, Zahir came over beside me! His mum was arriving back in NZ from Fiji! Ain't it amazing meeting people you know in places like the airport?
Tonight we made contact with Aonghas for the first time and we can confirm he landed safely! I guess we would've heard something in the news if there was any tragedy (touch wood!). He's staying in some posh hotel in San Francisco where they're stopping over for the night before catching another flight to Atlanta. He bought an Eee PC, one of those mini lightweight ASUS laptops to bring with him (originally I was going to get one for myself but decided I'd wait for the next model!) and so he was having a video conversation with us through Skype in the bathroom so as to not wait anyone else up. I think it was about 3am in the morning over there!
Anyway right about now he's probably having breakfast or leaving for the airport!
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