Because our cousin Janice had her 21st birthday and it finished late, we didn't really bother sleeping. OK well I got a little bit of a nap on the couch before I had to wake up at about 2am to have a shower. I rang Jireh, one of the other guys from church who would be going with Tim and Gabrielle our youth group leaders, as well as Andrew and Ben. He sounded like a zombie over the phone, but that's understandable, considering he had stayed up all night playing FIFA!
We left at quarter to three in the morning. I drove the car, to give Aonghas a chance to work on a video about the children's summer programme he had to present at the church service in the morning. It was raining though, so he was too concerned about my driving to be able to spend time working on the video!
We got to the airport slightly before 4am to find the group waiting outside the Air New Zealand check-in counters. James and his family hadn't arrived yet! They had already been at the airport for a while before we arrived, so we waited until I got a reply to a text message I sent James' dad, something along the lines of:
"We're still at home packing, about to leave"
They were required to check in right now, so we were a little worried! We decided to go upstairs and explore the airport to pass the time away. We checked out a few souvenir shops and then rested on this mini 'mock' stadium grandstand (advertising the Rugby World Cup 2011). We sat there for almost an hour, just watching people pass by, talking and also playing games.
It was now almost 5am and James still hadn't arrived. Jireh and I decided to go back downstairs to see if we could find James and his family. We couldn't spot them, and were about to give up, when we came across him on our way to the toilet! We texted the others and they soon came down to meet him.
They went to the check-in counters to check in with all their luggage. They had heaps of luggage with them seeing as they're leaving the country for good. That's probably why it took almost an hour for them to check in! We were just standing around watching them, worrying and hoping they would be done soon! They were required to get to the departure gate by 6.05am!
With about ten minutes till the gate closed, James and his family had finally finished checking in. They gave us some muesli bars that they weren't able to take with them (over the weight limit I think!), and then we headed upstairs to the departure gate! By now the sun had started to rise!
James said his goodbyes to us, we had a group photo, and then they left.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc_W6iXqQfg)
By now we were really tired. We went back to Henderson where we had breakfast at McDonald's. We all had Massive McMuffin Combo's. The Massive McMuffin was surprisingly massive (usually the pictures are quite misleading!). We were zombies by now, dying for some sleep!
As soon as we got home, Aonghas and Hamish just fell asleep on the couches while I wasn't feeling the best and tried to find somewhere to get some rest as well! It felt as if the day was over, when in fact it was just the start of what would be a very long day!
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