{"id":34,"date":"2002-12-22T19:16:35","date_gmt":"2002-12-23T00:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=34"},"modified":"2002-12-22T19:16:35","modified_gmt":"2002-12-23T00:16:35","slug":"airport-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/?p=34","title":{"rendered":"Airport Security"},"content":{"rendered":"

Upon reading this<\/a> (courtesy of my surrogate big brother and part time viking Brian<\/a>), I thought I might want to tell the story of flying from Ontario International Airport to LAX. (It was a 15 minute flight and a waste of gas. There is a reason why United<\/a> is going bankrupt.)<\/p>\n

After spending a few days with my in-laws, I was flying up to San Jose ahead of my then-fianc\u00e9 Jon to work on some wedding prep with my mom. We got to the Ontario airport about 90 minutes before my flight (which was almost too late) and when I went to the ticket counter, they informed me that I was going to be the one to have my suitcase randomly checked. This alarmed me somewhat because I had the following in my suitcase:
\n-2 vaccuum-sealed packages of Turkish coffee with the writing being about 75% Arabic and 25% French. (It was from a Lebanese shop.)
\n-my hijab from the Islam class I’d taken with the pins in place for easy fastening
\n-a few copies of the Qur’an
\n-some Arabic picture books that they gave us at one of the mosques
\n-a few other books from my Islam class<\/p>\n

This is of course post-9\/11 and I was mentally trying to figure out how to explain all of it since saying “I am a seminary student” could easily be misinterpreted. Thankfully my screener was from a Muslim country in Africa and had a sense of humor, teasing me about all of it as he was going through my suitcase. (“Ohhh… is this Turkish coffee any good?”<\/b> “Nope… haven’t tried it but it smells weird.”<\/i> “You know… you can get a better version of the Qur’an than this.”<\/b> “Yeah… but my Arabic isn’t that great.”<\/i> “If you’re a seminary student, shouldn’t you be a nun?”<\/b> “NOOOOOO!!!!! I’m Lutheran.”<\/i>)<\/p>\n

When I got upstairs, the metal detector went off and they wanded me and put my shoes through the machine. (Oooooooh… steel-toed hiking boots from Lands’ End<\/a>…) Then, they informed me that they would have to wand me, pat me down, and search my carry-on bags at the gate. When I got to the gate, my checker was the one-armed gate agent who had checked me in. Getting patted down by him was an interesting experience though I would have preferred a woman do it. (It’s kind of strange to feel someone’s stump [in place of an arm and hand] patting down your chest.) I got on my nice little 15 minute flight to LAX and had an easy time once I got there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Upon reading this (courtesy of my surrogate big brother and part time viking Brian), I thought I might want to tell the story of flying from Ontario International Airport to LAX. (It was a 15 minute flight and a waste … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p38xoO-y","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}