Take 1
After months of planning the day had finally arrived. My classmate and friend, Jordan, and I were heading to Iganga,Uganda for a medical mission trip at the local hospital. Being the overly prepared girls that we are, we had checked and rechecked every detail from the itinerary to the number of vitamins we needed to last 30 days.
Unfortunately for us, we couldn't have prepared well enough to avoid the tiny obstacles of the day. It started out pretty normal. Jordan and I were up until about
2 am packing and organizing our bags. After finally forcing ourselves to bed (even though neither one of us actually slept) we were up at 8 and ready to go. We had a few errands to run, suffered a last minute anxiety attack in subsequent purchases at Target, and ate our last meal in Raleigh. Her parents (along with boyfriend Josh) graciously took us to the airport and even carried our luggage. And when I say luggage I mean the 4 pieces that we each have (guess we overpacked a little bit). We knew that our flight had been delayed about an hour. Even with that delay, we still would have made our connecting flight in New York and headed to Cairo, Egypt with plenty of time to see some pyramids. However, once we got to the airport we were told that the flight wouldn't be leaving until
5:30. That meant no connecting flight and no pyramids. And this was after our bags had been checked and boarding passes obtained. From there the situation spiraled downhill pretty quickly. The guy at the ticket counter was the opposite of helpful and refused to help us find another flight. So now Jordan was forced to be her assertive self and figure this out. That left me sitting and waiting patiently. My other job was to keep her from freaking out after being forced to repeat the same story to a few different airline reps. Needless to say these people weren't helpful...they wanted us to pay $3000 and get a "doctor's note" saying that missing the connecting flight wasn't our fault directly. That was not an option. They were also telling us that we would have to pay for a hotel at JFK out of pocket, go to stand by and hope we could get a flight to Cairo, and then play the waiting game again to get from Cairo to Entebbe. Not only that, but the flights were full
until July 5th and flights from Cairo to Entebbe only happen on Wednesdays and Fridays. So that option would have left us stranded for who knows how long in Egypt...and the spontaneity involved with that plan didn't sit well with 2 girls who have extreme Type A personalities.
Instead of just sitting there, I decided to make myself useful and get back in line to talk to another ticket person at the counter. Luckily, we found a ticket officer , who was efficient, but not too friendly, that was able to solve our problem. With a few clicks of the mouse, our flight was rescheduled for early
Friday morning. So that meant a few extra days in Raleigh and a slight delay in the culture shock we are about to experience. So instead of blogging from the plane or the pyramids, we are sitting in Jordan's living room listening to rain and planning our (hopeful) last full day in the US.
P & J
