Sunday, March 20, 2011

The crazy 32 hour day.

So at 3:00am on Saturday St. Petersburg time, we all left for the airport together.  After a slight baggage mishap in the St. Pete's airport (apparently we were only slotted for one checked bag each, but thankfully God knows these things so we still had our extra money to pay for the baggage), we thought we were on our way home.  We were late getting out of St. Pete's and late getting into Frankfurt. We missed our flight in Frankfurt and had to be rerouted.  Unfortunately, there was not space for all 13 of us to continue together.  Cameron, Jody, and I were put on a flight to Newark and then on to DFW, while Austin, Amelie, Riley, Aimee, Beth, Dusty, and Matt were put on a flight to Calgary Canada before going to Detroit and tomorrow to DFW.  Joshua, Shannon and Chuck were left in Germany and are supposed to be getting on a flight to DFW any time now.  I cannot speak for anyone else, but the adventure did not end there for my group.  We got into Newark with no time to spare and still had to go through customs and recheck our bags.  We meet an incredibly nice baggage checker who helped us retag our bags and pointed us towards our gate with a "RUN!" to emphasize our lack of time.  Thankfully our flight was delayed or we would have missed the last flight out of Newark to DFW tonight.  Unforunately our flight was delayed for over four hours.  Jody, Cameron, and I landed in DFW at 2 and are all safely home (as far as I know) almost exactly one day after we started.  However due to the fact that we followed the sun today with our time zone shifts, our day was 32 hours.

Please continue to pray for those who are still traveling.  They should all make it home by the end of Sunday.

Hopefully when our brains gets back together after sleeping, we will post about our time at the Harbor.

2 comments:

  1. We didn't end up on that flight to Calgary. We got through security & to the gate only to be met by the gate agent telling us he told the ticket agent not to send us because the gate was closed. He was not happy & neither was I.

    We then went to another ticket agent. She was so wonderful, sent by God! She spent the better part of an hour trying to find us a way home. Every flight she found the connection to Dallas was booked. All of DFW must have been out of town this past week. She finally found us seats on a plane to Detroit with a connection to DFW today.

    From that point the trip became so much better. The flight to Detroit was long but we were in Business Class. We started out with Austin behind me & the girls in the back of the plane. Two school trips were on the plane. The lady who was to sit by me was with the people sitting by Austin so they switched. They heard me mention to the Flight Attendant that my girls were in the back & offered to switch again since their group was in the back. God is so good!!

    The only issue we had was that Amelie's suitcase was left in Germany.

    The airline put us up in a nice hotel & paid for dinner & breakfast for us in Detroit. We had no problems getting to the airport or on to the plane. Glad to be home!

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  2. I kept thinking of the Home Alone where the mom goes through all those plane changes & bargaining to get home only to walk in & then have her family walk in a few minutes later, having taken the flight she passed up in the beginning.

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