Well today was already going to be an exciting day as I prepared to travel back in time a day and go to the US. I mean I was really excited about the fact that I got to have lunch twice today, but as it turned out the day was already full of excitement even before leaving Auckland.
I arrived in Auckland from New Plymouth after a great 4 days with my uncle, aunt and cousin. My plane was on time and everything was going well, I found my way over to the international terminal and found the left luggage place and then headed off into town. Now my plane was to catch a bus into the city and go and visit the Walls (a family I know from my last time serving with Mercy Ships) at the Mercy Ships NZ office. Now I had found the right bus and got off at the right stop then walked to what I thought was the right street, but then after walking from one end to the other and then back of this rather long street I saw a post office building then it finally dawned on me that I had the wrong address, you see I had mistakenly written down the Mercy Ships NZ postal address from the website thinking it was the street address. Oh well not too much was lost so I went and had lunch and a bit more of a look around the city before hoping on a bus back to the airport.
Once back at the airport I walked from the domestic terminal to a nearby hanger where my cousin works for a company flying smaller planes. I found the place ok and then went in and picked up my second big bag that I had left with my cousin for 4 days and walked over to the international terminal. Once there I picked up my other bag from left luggage and proceeded to check in.
Now this is where the fun really started, after making my way to the front on the que and then to the desk everything seemed to be going well, until as the lady was looking through all my paper work tickets, visa wavers etc she said "oh you don't have a ticket for departing the US". I said that I didn't think that would be a problem because I had the visa waver for 90 days and I was going to book a ticket over there. She then said she wasn't sure and went out back to check with her supervisor. After about 10mins she came back and said that her supervisor wasn't sure either so they were calling the US to find out, so then another 10mins later she came back and said sorry but you will need to purchase a departing ticket or they won't let you in. She then said she thought I could purchase a fully refundable ticket from air NZ for a return flight to Auckland and then just cancel it once I was over there and had a new ticket, but when I went to the air NZ help desk the guy told me that there actually were no fully refundable tickets anymore and they all came with a minimum US$300 cancellation fee. So he suggested that I go to flight centre and book a ticket from New York to London as it would be cheaper, so that is what I did I got a ticket from New York to London and it cost me NZ$1850 and has a cancellation fee of US$250. So after doing that it took all of 5 seconds to check me in and get me a nice isle seat near the front of the plane.
So after checking in I went up and went through customs then found myself and nice comfortable seat and pulled out my laptop, just when I had there was an overhead page "Could passenger Timothy Benson, thats passenger Timothy Benson please report to the customs area. I was slightly confused as to why they needed to see me and then as I was walking back down there it hit me. I checked my pocket in me jacket and realised tat I had dropped my passport along with my boarding pass in my rush to get through customs. So as you can imagine my walk quickened up a fair bit, but to my delight when I got there after answering a few questions they produced and handed me my passport and boarding pass.
And that brings us up to this point as I sit here in the Airport waiting for my plane to board, typing this up to post later.
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