good! But our spirits were soon dampened when we realised that rather than get anything ready on the off chance that we may take to the air, everyone just carried on doing nothing! A deep breath and counting to 10 was the order of the moment. We discussed a potential marketing plan for TAM and then thought it would be better off in a comedy sketch! With a big horrible greasy lump in our stomachs we sat ourselves back down and waited and wondered!

2 O’clock came and went and still no word. Now our man was saying wait till 2.30, well it was only another 30 minutes what was that in the grand scheme of things? I mean we’d only been waiting 28 hours, granted we weren’t like those poor people they always shown on the news when planes are delayed and they sleep in the airport for days, but those airports are slightly more busy, this airport only did 3 flights a day!!! They must be exhausted if all

3 planes take off in a day!!!

At last it was go, go, go. We’d been given the green light and we were going. Then came the fun bit, we all had to check in and get our boarding passes!!! Also the plane was over-booked and there had been a far few arguments between the Israelis and their tour guide. There were 2 girls who weren’t booked on the plane and they had been back to the airport 4 days in a row! Surprisingly nobody offered their seat to them and they went off in tears, we did feel sorry for them, but not sorry enough to give them our tickets! Check-in was a long and slow process but finally we were all ready then after a little more waiting a door was unlocked and we were able to go through to another room. Then each person had to show the guard their passport and their bag had to be searched!!! Can you believe they didn’t do this earlier? It could be bloody pouring down in