Ward Family Vacations

New Zealand 2007

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and in the photo above that is definitely the case, I'll get back to that later!  Both Jessica and Bryan were given a trip upon graduation.  Jessica chose to go to Germany and Bryan took some time to decide where he wanted to go but picked the obvious choice to go to New Zealand which is where his sister and her husband, a native Kiwi, lived.  Bryan graduated High School in May 2006, but went straight into Summer School at the local college because he wanted to basically get in two years of schooling in one year by taking classes for two summer sessions.  He had the summer of 2007 classes to finish so he could get in his 48 credit hours for a Transfer Scholarship when he transferred to Mississippi State, so we scheduled Bryan's trip between his Spring and Summer classes.

Bryan was scheduled to leave Memphis on Thursday, May 10th.  His first flight was from Northwest to Los Angeles leaving Memphis at 2:20 pm and arriving LA at 4:24 pm (remember LA is on Pacific time and two hours behind us).  Bryan had never flown before but found his way around just fine which is amazing since LA is not the easiest airport in the world to navigate through.  I told him when the deplaned in LA just follow everyone and you would end up at the front of the terminal!  His LA to Auckland did not leave on Qantas until 9:05 pm so he had time to get where he needed to.  He called me on his cell phone to let me know he made it and to see where he needed to go next.  He found his way with no problem to the Tom Bradley International Terminal and with a little maneuvering was able to find his way to the Qantas counter, get checked in, through security and went to his gate to wait for his departure in 5 hours.