Entry the First - Flight

Thursday 10th December

FLIGHT TO DUBAI/AMMAN

•  Synopsis of day: Flying. Then some more flying. And then for good measure, some more flying.
• Highlight of the day: Discovering that Emirates provides fluffy brown socks and eye masks, and that Prince Caspian can be played in French (my dvd copy doesn't).
• Lowlight of the day: The breakfast. What WAS that?

• Favourite quote/word: During the Arabic flight info, we are convinced the word 'workedelic' was featured, and it has become rather our catchphrase.
• Favourite photo: I only took two – one without dark circles (before) and one with (after).

•  Cultural-shock moment: Seeing a woman cross-stitching on the flight to Amman. (Australian customs would have been highly unimpressed – so I had mine on my suitcase)
• New food consumed: Whatever that spoonful of indistinguishable green was.
• Random act of crazy: The Time Traveller's Wife. Grooming much?
• Something I want to remember: Listening to Handel's Messiah.
  

We had a relatively uneventful - though it seemed interminable – flight to Dubai and tried to make myself comfortable in the very small section allotted to me for fifteen hours. Emirates tried to win us over with brown fluffy socks and the most extensive entertainment systems I've ever seen, but the breakfast they served each of us was practically inedible (yay for rice cakes).

Dubai was such a quiet airport, and the change in clothing styles was immediately apparent. We ended up going to a French boulangerie for coffee, which felt a bit incongruous amongst all the Arabic scripts, gold, designer articles and assorted camel merchandise.

The next flight was much nicer and I think I slept more on it than on the first flight, but again no more than about half an hour at a time. At the airport we met the rest of the group, and as anticipated, we are the youngest in the group, but clearly not the most insane.