Music Tour- Day Twenty

Our five-hour stopover (actually, I think that it might have ended up being closer to four because of the delay at Paris Airport) at Dubai Airport was rather uneventful. We were provided free food by Emirates because it was such a long stopover, so first we searched for the location of the free food. We had to ask for directions, but the directions were very helpful.

The food wasn’t too much- mainly sandwiches and fruit- but we could take however much we wanted. I think I just took a fruit or two. While we were in the queue, Katie asked the people working there if they were working all night, as it was midnight in Dubai at that time. She was so insistent with this odd question that Karri had to tell her repeatedly to stop it.

Later on, I had a yoghurt snack from Pinkberry. I’m not sure what else I ended up doing for the remainder of the stopover. By the time we had to meet back at the departure gate, everyone was exhausted and most of us were sleeping on chairs or on the floor, apart from Angus who went to buy himself an iPod Touch. Next to the wall, a random traveller was sleeping on a mat that he had brought himself- well prepared!

The whole idea of having to endure another 11 hours of flying after a 5 hour flight and a 5 hour stopover was just... awful, to say the least. In a tired voice, Karri spoke the three words that were probably going through everyone’s minds at that moment:

“I... hate... flying...”

When we had gotten our boarding passes checked, we went down the escalator, and proceeded to sleep on the floor of the lower floor of the gate, until Mrs F yelled at us to “start acting civilised.” Eventually, we got on the plane, which was thankfully on time. I had a window seat again (I hate window seats). Max, who had aisle seat, fell asleep almost immediately.

As soon I had thought that the seatbelt light had gone off, I rushed down to the toilet to brush my teeth using the amenity kit I had been given (I had been waiting for this opportunity during the five-hour stopover!). I only realised the seatbelt light hadn’t gone off because there was an illuminated sign in there telling me to go back to my seat, but the flight attendants didn’t seem to care.

Later, we were served breakfast. It was hilarious when the flight attendants tried to serve Max breakfast because he was just like, “No, I’ll be fine, I’m not hungry.” I asked him if he wanted to swap seats but he said no. I think he was too tired to do that as well.

After a while the cabin lights were dimmed and it became quite dark. I decided to take the hint and use my eyepatch and recline my seat to get some sleep. I think I might have actually succeeded, but to what extent I am not certain.

When it was soon time to land in Australia, we were shown a video about quarantine rules. We had to see the same video twice because we were flying Emirates: first in Arabic with English subtitles, then in English with English subtitles.

The first thing that we had to do once we had gotten off the plane was to queue up for immigration. Someone said something about the airport having boarder security, to which we replied, “Yes, every airport has border security!” They then said that they were talking about the TV show called “Border Security.” Mrs F said, “Well, let’s just make sure that we’re not on it!”

After passing through passport control, I took my luggage off the conveyor belt and could leave instantly as I didn’t have to wait for the instruments to come out of the hold or carry a percussion instrument. I proceeded through quarantine, in which it looked like I had a bit of everything because I was being my usual overcautious self, but everything went through without any problems. On the other side of the door, I found a whole bunch of parents clapping and cheering, and I just stood there for a couple of seconds, a little overwhelmed, not knowing in which direction to walk next. Soon, I saw my sister running towards me and thus I escaped being in the limelight, the subject of the applause of a bunch of overenthusiastic parents.

Music Tour- Day Nineteen

That morning, after breakfast, we all carried our suitcases down to the buses. As a result of moving the lighter, larger items to my suitcase and the smaller, denser items to my hand luggage, my suitcase was so light that I could carry it with one hand and my clarinet with the other. According to Mrs F, I looked like I was strolling down the stairs! Once I had taken my suitcase to the bus I offered to help some other people with instruments but nobody seemed too overburdened.

On the way to the airport, we had a quiz which included questions such as “How many hand towels did Jenny buy in London [to make up for the hostel’s lack of towels]?” (114 if I remember correctly) and “How long was the train ride through the Channel Tunnel?” (apparently it was only 30-45min!).

In the queue for check-in, Stevie J asked me how I was so I said, “Better than before leaving Canberra!” and when he asked why, I said that it was because I used to be afraid of aeroplane toilets. His response was something like, “Oh, they’re just a walk in the park now, aren’t they?”

Hilarious. It’s even funnier when you consider how much room you actually get to manoeuvre in those things.

When I had to check in, I tried to lift my suitcase with one hand again, except somehow I managed to accidentally swing it around and bang it into the counter twice before placing it on the conveyor belt. Funnily enough, it wasn’t because I’d gone even lighter than 15kg- my bag weighed 16kg or something, but the guy didn’t care. I think we would have only had to pay if the whole group (including instruments) ended up being overweight.

After I had checked in, we all compared seating allocations with each other. Someone commented on how it was probably going to be a big plane. I told them that when I was bored I looked up what type of aircraft, I found that we would be going on an A380 (currently the world’s largest passenger plane) for the flight. I then proceeded to be the most annoying person on Earth by telling them all about what happened to a Qantas A380 theyear before (one of the engines exploded).

Once I’d gotten past security, I had a job to do: I had to buy my sister’s makeup for her (she’d given me the money to do so, and a list of what she wanted). It was easy enough except I didn’t see the mascara she wanted the first time I went in. Fortunately, I decided to have a closer look and found it.

We then went to get lunch at a shop further down the airport. The shop had a variety of meals that required heating up in the in-store microwave. I got a hamburger, which was pretty overpriced, but I guess I should have expected that considering that that was pretty much the only food shop in the terminal (if not the only one). If I remember correctly a couple of other people had pasta. Once I had finished my hamburger, I finished off my chocolates, but not my lollipop.

Our flight was once again delayed for about an hour. When our plane arrived, however, there was some excitement and photo-taking amongst nerds like me who get excited by big planes.

Once I was on the plane, I sat down in my allocated seat, which unfortunately was a window seat, and listened to “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd. Not long after, Mrs F came and sat down in the aisle seat. Perfect timing. Soon, a year 12 boy came and sat between us. When the plane took off, the year 12 boy left and Mrs F and I were left with a spare seat (the plane was big enough so that there were plenty of spare seats available). Mrs F told me that I could have that seat as I planned to try and get some sleep on that flight as it was night time back home and I wanted to adjust my body clock.

Needless to say, my attempts were futile. I couldn’t sleep because my old phobia continually tried to haunt me. Eventually, I listened to the second movement of Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony (it’s played at the end of The King’s Speech, and it’s a piece of music that says to me, “Go forth with courage!”) and went to visit my old No. 1 fear. I told it off for not being loud enough (!), then went back to my seat to try and sleep again. Some turbulence came and felt as if it was rocking me to sleep, but unfortunately the seatbelt light came on and I had to sit up properly.

Later on, when I waited in the queue for a second time, the toilets decided to really “go for gold.” Two flushed at once and they both sounded loud even in the queue! When I was at the front of the queue, I decided to “walk off my nervous energy” and started pacing with the first couple of lines of a song I had written going through my head:

“Harsh it is, the path you travel lonely,
Fear awaits, but forward you must journey.”

As I turned around to walk off a little more of my nervous energy, I found, with some irritation, that there was a vacant toilet before me. To be honest, I think that’s possibly the only time I’ve actually felt annoyed at seeing a vacant toilet.

When I returned to my seat, I had an epiphany telling me why I was the most annoying passenger on aeroplanes.

I am the most annoying person on aeroplanes because I never shut up about aeroplane toilets. I never shut up when I’m IN them either, as I’m always singing or taunting them to calm myself down.

When the plane landed, everyone got up before the seatbelt sign went off. (Who doesn’t?) Mrs F said, “No, you can’t stand up! The seatbelt sign’s still on! You know the rules!” As if in defiance, Murphy Major, who was sitting in front of Mrs F, got up, stretched, and looked at Mrs F right in the eyes while casually talking about how much leg room the seats had!

Music Tour- Day Eighteen

(I think I could actually flesh out this one a bit more, but it's 9.01pm now and my head hurts after being on the computer for 8 hours- major procrastinating!)

On our last full day in France, we went back to Paris. In the morning, we went on a river cruise down the Seine, accompanied by commentary in five or so different languages including English, French, Chinese (Mandarin) and Japanese. I kept up with my tradition of taking photos of the underside of bridges as well as the wonders that could be seen on the banks of the Seine. The chaperones advised everyone to go to the loo on the boat as there wouldn’t be too many opportunities later, so we did. I saw the sign that said “To flush- close the lid and push” and from the words “close the lid” I instantly knew that it was a vacuum toilet.

So I did the unthinkable. I closed the lid, washed my hands, opened the door, covered my ears and kicked the button.

I unblocked my ears at the end and was glad to hear that I hadn’t blocked my ears for no good reason. I kicked myself all the way back to my seat, however, as I was ashamed at having given in to my old fear. I was going to flush away some used tissues I had in my pocket from my cold in order to make up for it, but unfortunately there was a queue each time so I would have to wait until the flight the next day.

After the cruise, we went back into the buses and were dropped off somewhere else in Paris. We got into our tour groups and walked around. We went to a souvenir shop before crossing the road to another road with a few food places and souvenir shops. We passed an Asian restaurant, and some people in my group insisted on having sushi, because it totally makes sense to go to France to eat Asian food! I just had my packed lunch, but I couldn’t be bothered peeling my orange because it was too messy. I thought it was just me being domestically challenged, but when I asked if anybody was good at peeling oranges, everybody said that they weren’t. (Later, when I returned home, I overheard some other people complaining about peeling oranges. I can’t explain how relieved this made me feel.)

After lunch, we met up again outside a souvenir shop at the end of the road. A few fire engines were now on the little road we were on, but we couldn’t see the fire so we assumed it was on the next street. When everyone was together, we went for a walk to the front of Notre Dame de Paris (we didn’t go in). We then set off for the Metro train so that we could take the train to the Eiffel Tower. Our train was a double-decker train, which fascinated us. Someone said, “Why take a double-decker bus when you can take a double-decker train?”

On the train, we passed a station called “Pont de l’Alma.” As Ashleigh was obsessed with the Llama song at this stage, I wanted to take a picture of the sign because “L’ALMA” looks a little bit like “LLAMA” and it wouldn’t surprise me if “l’Alma” was pronounced something like “lol-ma.” Unfortunately I forgot to turn off flash and the random person sitting across from me glared at me as she probably thought I’m one of those people who takes pictures of people without them noticing for the laughs. I don’t think I sounded very convincing when I said that I was taking a picture of the train station as there wasn’t much to take a picture of.

When we got off at the Eiffel Tower, one of the chaperones started talking about which way we had to go to get to the Eiffel Tower. Claire said, “I don’t think we’re going to miss it- it’s a 300m tall tower!” As expected, we reached the Eiffel Tower with little difficulty.

At the Eiffel Tower, we were given tickets. Each A4 sheet of paper had two tickets, so we were meant to go up in pairs. Unfortunately, in the massive queues on the tower, I lost my partner who was holding our tickets, but someone else with a ticket had lost their partner so we partnered up, hoping that our partners had partnered up with each other. If I remember correctly, my new partner’s original partner decided to go down early, so that solved the problem.

The queue was absolutely ridiculous, but at least there was a good view throughout it. At long last, we reached the summit, where we went onto the (enclosed) balcony and took pictures before joining the queue to go back down again. In the queue, when I looked behind me, a couple of people from our tour group were holding those special brushes with built-in toothpaste which allow you to brush your teeth anywhere. Actually, they weren’t just holding them, they were brushing their teeth with them! One of them remarked, “This is a strange place to brush our teeth!”

Around the small room at the top of the Eiffel Tower were flags from different countries with their distances from the Eiffel Tower. There was also a map showing the different floors of the Eiffel Tower in detail, including a toilet on the 7^th floor. I pointed it out to Xanthe, and she asked, “How does it flush?”

Eventually, we got down to the second floor and queued up in a much shorter queue for the lift down to the ground floor. As we boarded the lift, a little panel that displayed weight. Karri commented on this, saying, “I refuse to believe that we all weigh 4.2 tons!” I suggested that it might be including the weight of all of the metal that the carriage is comprised of, and she said that that made sense.

At the bottom, we had ice-cream (I ordered in French again, and the person who served me helped me with my pronunciation) and wished Julia farewell as she would be setting off with her family for Italy and then Dubai. It was soon time for us to go back to the hotel. As we left, I saw Alex T in the next bus pulling a weird face with his mouth open and eyes wide, so I pulled the same weird face back at him, and we both started laughing. (When I got the chance, I said to him, “Nice bus face!”)

That night, we had a meeting about the journey home. Mr Hey said that the luggage limit was 30kg (the economy class allowance for Emirates), and we would have to pay if we went over that limit. The lady who organised our tour (at least the parts in France) was there, however, and she said, “It says here that their luggage limit is 15kg due to the instruments and it’s 30 Euros for every kilogram over!” I was a bit worried about that seeing as my luggage weighed somewhere around 18kg last time I checked, so as soon as I was able I moved all of my items that are light but take up a lot of space into my suitcase, moved all of my smaller, denser items into my hand luggage, threw out my old shoes (which is what my mum told me to do anyway) and my toiletries as I knew that I would get toothpaste and a toothbrush on the flight home. The bins outside were pretty full once everyone had lightened their loads.

Lights out was at 11pm, but at 5 to 11 Jess C and I could hear people talking really loudly down the corridor. At 11pm, Jonty and some other people started singing “Joshua fight de battle ob Jerico” at full volume. Nobody came to tell them off, which surprised me greatly. When the singers finally did get told off, that was no problem for them- they simply moved outside and, according to people who saw, were dancing really strangely.

It turned out that all of the teachers and chaperones were in the other building.

Music Tour- Day Seventeen

On our second morning in France, we went to Amiens via the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, a fairly large war memorial. It had a tower which we climbed up. There was a good view, but it was a view of gravestones (as well as other people from our tour group). We stopped another time to have a lunch which was slightly rushed if you factored in the toilet queue as well. At last, we were back on the bus and off to Amiens.

When we arrived in Amiens, I was told by the bus driver to put my clarinet onto Bus 3 with all of the other small instruments, which I did gratefully as it saved me the bother of lugging it around with me. Our first stop was Notre Dame d’Amiens, which we were given a tour of. It was an enormous cathedral, with large stained glass windows and plenty of sculptures and decorations.

Following our tour, we were given time to explore Amiens in small groups before meeting at the Town Hall (l’Hôtel de Ville). We went down to the road the town hall was on as it had a lot of shops in it, and turned right and right again to another small street with some stalls and shops. At one of the stalls, Jacinta saw some mini suits and she and Boyuan were talking about buying them for their younger brothers. At one of the shops, I saw a bag pinkish in colour that caught my eye, and I debated for a little over whether or not to buy it. In the end, I decided to buy it because I had bought very little up to this point.

Once we had left this store, we went back to the main road and walked in the other direction. We saw a shop called “Claire’s Accessories,” so we took pictures of Claire standing in front of it. Some people bought crêpes at a crêpe stall. I wasn’t hungry so I didn’t get one. We then headed off to McDonalds for a toilet stop, and although access to the toilets is meant to be via a password provided on the bottom of your receipt (to stop people like us who don’t want to go to public pay toilets!), some nice people held open the doors for us so we didn’t have to pay a cent.

After leaving McDonalds, we continued down the road and stopped by a pâtisserie. I bought a caramel macaroon because my sister told me that I had to have at least one macaroon in France. I ordered in French, and was very proud of myself until I realised that I couldn’t understand the shop assistant’s reply and had to guess by her body language. A couple of other people bought macaroons as well.

Eventually we came to a junction with a double-decker merry-go-round. For some reason, that excited us. I spoke in broken French to the merry-go-round attendant because he was curious about what school we came from and why we were in France. We then proceeded to go onto the merry-go-round. Some people didn’t want to go on but when we found that the tickets were cheaper if a certain number of people went on, we dragged them on too. I sat on a swinging bench on the top deck. As our ride neared its end, we caught sight of Mr Hey who was watching us from below and shouted greetings down to him.

It was now time to head back to the Amiens Town Hall. Unfortunately, as we headed over there, it started to rain, which spoiled our plans of having a concert outside the town hall. We were shepherded into the town hall, where we were provided with food and drink. As it started to clear up, we warmed up our voices. Later we had a sort of mini-concert on the steps of the town hall and we had our photos taken, both while we were singing and after we were singing. As you can imagine, the former looked rather odd due to the positions of everyone’s mouths.

We were given a short amount of time- fifteen minutes or so- to roam the streets of Amiens again before heading back to Notre Dame d’Amiens. I had remembered the way we had taken to get to the street with the town hall, so when we passed that road, I thought the others intended to do a quick spot of shopping. Later I found out that this was not the case, and we all realised at once that we had not taken the most efficient route of returning to the cathedral.

Upon returning, I noticed, to my horror, that some people already had their small instruments with them. I asked Mr Hey where Bus 3 was because my clarinet was on it, and he scared me further by saying, “No buses are carrying instruments.” Later on, however, he told me that he realised that Bus 3 was, indeed, carrying instruments, and it was going to arrive when we would actually be performing.

Dinner was at what seemed to be the refectory of a nearby university. The food was pretty good, at least good enough to make up for the fact that the person who was meant to have opened the refectory in time for us arrived late. After dinner, we walked to a smaller cathedral which was practically right behind the university refectory. This was where we would have our concert that night.

If I remember correctly, Bus 3 was a little late, but I was glad to be reunited with my clarinet, and Boyuan was glad to be reunited with her violin. I performed with both Wind Orchestra and Chorale that night. Not too many people arrived for the concert, and the coughs that punctuated the gaps between Chorale songs didn’t exactly make for our best concert ever, but I don’t remember our playing being terrible either. Symphony Orchestra’s playing of Small Town was made a little spooky by the trumpet players’ utilisation of the balcony at the back of the auditorium, which made us wonder where the trumpet sound was coming from.

On the bus home from Amiens, I just played my DS and occasionally tried to peer out the window with little success due to the darkness outside. Part way through the drive, I heard Kieran yell to Angus, “They’re talking about how the 50^th Battalion’s a herp derp!”

I had no idea what “herp derp” meant, but I was a little sick of the phrase since I’d been hearing it from the mouths of the boys since Hungary, so I just sighed and kept playing. Eventually, however, Angus got sick of the “herp derp” talk and yelled at the other boys to stop talking about the 50^th Battalion. Their response was as to be expected:

“Okay- 60^th Battalion!”

“51^st Battalion!”
“55^th Battalion!”
“40^th Battalion!”