Renae está
atrapada en Nueva York…para 20 horas!
I haven’t even arrived in Argentina, yet like I said it
would, a good story has come.
Let’s begin in the airplane in San
Francisco.
After getting a grand total of 3 hours of sleep the night before, I entered the
plane to the sound of 2 babies crying, walked to the very back where my seat
was located, sat next to a man that strangely looked exactly like the flight
attendant (except the flight attendant had grey hair), and began to wonder if I
was on the right plane as the pilot said, “Welcome aboard on the flight to
Paris”. My first reaction was, “aw man…how’d I happen to get on this flight”,
until the flight attendant said, “We will be stopping in New York before Paris”
(whew!). So my flight begins to go out (we
boarded early), and then we waited, and waited, and even waited some more. We
ended up waiting an hour on the plane before finding out that there are extreme
thunderstorms all over the East Coast and we would have to wait another hour,
in which after that was up, we were told that we would be going back to the
terminal and getting off the plane until they were told it would be ok to go.
At this point I would have missed my flight to Buenos Aires, so I went to the
customer service line to try to see if I can change my flight.
After 2 hours of waiting, a customer service representative asked if anyone was on the
flight to New York and then when I said I was, she told me that my flight would
be leaving at 3:15 (which was in 20 minutes) and that they would connect me to
a flight in Houston which would then take me to Buenos Aires. I then remembered
my luggage was on that plane, so I rushed back to make it, only then to end up waiting
2 more hours before we finally left. Through all this waiting on the plane, I
quickly found out that the toilets were broken and not flushing (remember those
babies I told you about earlier, pee-yew!).
Now for the fun part.
When I arrived in New York at 2am “hoteless” and “luggageless” (as they would
not give us our luggage), the customer service line had just closed and we were
told that there would be no one to help us until 5am. I ended up meeting 2
other students who are going to be studying abroad in Buenos Aires, an
Argentinean girl who was going back to visit her family and an extremely nice
spanish professor who had studied abroad in Argentina when she was in school
and was going back to visit. After lots of phone calls and holds on the
complementary airport phone, I was told that the only flight going to Buenos
Aires was going to be on the 20th at 10pm. Right when I was about to
cry just thinking about being in the airport with no luggage, no contact
solution or case, no toiletries and no place to sleep for the next 2 days, the spanish
professor came up to me, gave me some Ghirardelli dark chocolate with almonds,
took the phone over and ended up getting me a flight on the 19th at
10pm that was originally “full”.
Afterwards all of us sat at a table conversing
about various things in spanish such as futbol, grammer, the culture and funny
spanish stories; for example the professor, Sarah, told us about a story when a
girl accidentally told someone, “estoy exitada” when she meant to say, “I am excited”,
but in spanish that would mean, “I am
sexually exited” instead of using “estoy emocionada”. Once she realized what she said,
she replied by saying “estoy embarassada” meaning, “I am pregnant” instead of “I
am embarrassed” like she meant. So for those of you English speaking folks, don’t
just automatically assume that you can add an a or an o on the end of the English
word to make what the word would be in spanish.
After about an hour or so we
went back to the customer service line where there were several people sleeping
on the ground.
We then ended up doing the same ourselves until the
representatives showed up at 5:45am and got us our new boarding passes. Sarah, the
professor, then brought us to the United Club in the airport as she happened to
have frequent flyer miles and club benefits, where we were able to sleep comfortably
on leather couches, get complimentary breakfast and snacks throughout our next
16 hrs of waiting, and even reserve shower appointments where soap, shampoo,
conditioner and towels were provided in our own large private bathroom with hot
water. In the end, everything worked
out, even though my 18hr flight ended up turning into a 43 hour exhausting
adventure. Now...We wait for our arrival in Argentina.
