To Wherever And Back

As most of you know, we did not get home Saturday night. After a lo-ong day of traveling to a total of 3 countries, we got to spend the night in the Quality Inn in Charlotte, NC. Saturday morning was busy. We were finalizing our move upstairs, turning in our key to our old apartment, packing our bags and trying to avoid getting carsick on the ride to the airport. Theo picked us up at 10:00. I had eaten (they say you're less likely to get car sick if you don't have an empty stomach) and taken a Dramamine. I rode in the front seat and had the air vents on my face. I still got sick. :( Theo didn't have to stop this time, but I felt very nauseous and he kept saying "Just 5, 10 more minutes." I was just praying that I wouldn't get car sick because I really hate throwing up. I made it to the airport! I was very queazy and a little green in the face, but I made it! There was no line at the check-in because we got there extra early. After we checked in we went to the small little waiting area. Our preacher and his wife were there. They came to the airport to see all of us off. At the last church service of the semester they passed a sheet around so we could write down what time our flight was. They came and brought us homemade banana bread for our trip. Wasn't that the sweetest thing? They had been there since 5:00 AM. Anyway, after a long 4 hour wait in a room that was crowded and had no air conditioning, it was time for our flight to Antigua. Only problem - no plane was there. Ryan was getting very worried. We learned that the planes are like a bus stop. They stop, some people get off, we get on and it takes off again. Once we got to Antigua we had to get in a very long line at Immigration. We had to fill out tons of forms as though we had been in Antigua for longer than 5 minutes. Questions like "purpose for visiting Antigua" and there was no box that said "just trying to get home after being in Dominica for four months". Once we got through Immigration we had to find our bags so we could re-check them. Ughh! Ryan was in a panic when he realized that only 3 of our 4 bags were there. A lady told us that we needed to go to the LIAT counter to file a missing bag report. I started roaming the area and found our other bag across the room mixed in with another flight. Whew! We ran and wheeled through customs and then had to go outside, around the building to the opposite side to re-check in at the US Air counter. When the guy handed us our boarding passes we saw that we weren't sitting together. He offered to change it, but our plane was supposed to board in 10 minutes and there were alot of other students in line behind us that needed on the same plane. We just left it alone and took off running, yet again. We had to go through security again. As we are trying to get through security it is about 2 minutes until we are supposed to board and there is a British lady holding up the line because she is on her cell phone. She can't walk through the metal detector with it, so nobody can do anything. She's in a great mood and is obviously in no hurry at all. In an English accent she says "I'm going to have to call you back. I'm trying to get through security". I was daydreaming about grabbing her phone and tomahawk tossing it across the room into the trash can. I'm telling you, I'm going to have to start taking blood pressure medicine on our travel days. We made it to our gate at 5:20, which is when we were scheduled to board. Guess what? The plane's just landing. We are an hour late leaving. Ryan and I don't get to sit together on the 4 hour flight which, by the way, was turbulent and, in case you forgot, I'm afraid of flying (even though I've been on around 33 planes this year). We arrive in Charlotte late and go through the same routine: immigration, recheck bags, etc. At the recheck counter there was a man announcing that if you were on ABC flights you could recheck your bags and hurry to your gate and if you were on XYZ flights that you had missed them and needed to go to another counter to get a hotel for the night. They told us we would make our flight, but needed to run. We ran like the wind. We got to security and, once again, came to a sudden halt. A foreign man couldn't understand that he had to take his laptop out of the bag before putting it through. Anyway, we waited about 5 minutes on him before we got to go through. I didn't even put my shoes back on. I just grabbed all our stuff, my shoes and Ryan's belt and took off running again. I told Ryan to go as fast as he could and I would be behind him. I'm slipping around on the tile floors in just my socks. I'm running so hard that my left side is cramping up and I'm breathing like a woman giving birth...but still running. We had to go to the furthest gate from the security point. We know because we asked. When Ryan got to the gate he got to watch as our plane backed away...without us. The airline put us on the morning flight and we had to go outside in the freezing cold (in our Tshirts) to wait for the shuttle to the hotel. We were tired, extremely disappointed, starving, and dirty. When we got to the hotel we counted out all of our US money and were able to order a pizza, which arrived around 1:00 AM. Since our bags were on their way to Nashville, we had to get toothbrushes and deodorant from the front desk. However, when we got out of the shower, we had nothing to put on but our dirty clothes that we had worn in Dominica, Antigua and now the U.S. Ryan had packed an extra pair of socks in his carry on. I'm not sure why, but I was very thankful. He gave them to me. I was so happy because my socks had been all over the Charlotte airport. Now that's love. Sacrificing your clean pair of socks after almost 15 hours of traveling. :)