I promise it hasn't been on purpose....just the whirlwind that is ADEC and Abu Dhabi.
Getting everyone caught up...if I can remember everything..lol
Well woke up early on Aug 19th to have the Golden Ticket announcement and instructions on what to do......My flight leaving the next day.....talk about craziness and running around. Luckily Matt took off and tried to keep me sane and helped as much as he could. Funny how you know it can come any day and you're prepared as much as you can be at that point then BAM the email is here and the first thing that goes through your mind is Oh S&#t!
So we did a last meal with my family at Pappasitos...you know I had to get in them yummy fajitas before I left, right?..lol. The next day mom and dad met Matt and me at the airport and so began my journey of what the heck is going to happen next..lol. Remember that scene in the beginning of Airplane when the plane is passing all of the gates and the guy on the intercom is announcing that the plane is now boarding at gate 17....18....19...20 (or something like that). Well that's kind of what I felt like, within an hour or so I switched gates 3 times....seriously??? But ohhh the fun did not stop there....so boarded an hour 1/2 late I think it was...but thinking to myself...I got plenty of time to catch my connection in Chicago..no worries......wronggggggggggggggg misterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......we sat on the tar mac (spelling?) for another couple of hours....they were kind enough to come around and offer a cup of water...::eyeroll:: Eventually that weather cleared and we took off......landed in Chicago O' Hare...with an hour to spare (see what I did there?..lol)....still thinking ok, I got this...just gotta run! Nahhhhh, for some reason Chicago does NOT like for me to leave (I got stuck when I went up to interview for the job back in May too). What's funny is the old man next to me was trying to catch the same flight....he didn't speak a lick of english but we communicated the best we could.....I figured out that he was really going to be in trouble because he still had to visit the Etihad desk to get his boarding pass, luckily the baggage guys who checked me in at Hartsfield checked me all the way through so I had mine. Sooo anyways back to the plane. Well we're rolling to the gate and roll up to the gate...i'm still golden, i'm in row 8, I got this!...nope! At the gate the little ramp thing that connects to the plane so we can get off wont move...I sat there in disbelief...lol, really??? I started getting nervous, I did start rambling about how I had "x" amount of minutes to get to the next gate to catch my flight...even asked the flight attendant if there was a way she could call and let them know that some of us catching the connecting flight was on this plane, we're here, we're coming! Well after 30 minutes at least of them fighting with the ramp they decided to move the plane to the gate next door....I had 10 minutes...still a glimmer of hope if they called..lol me and the old man were ready to run! We got to the gate, everyone around us let us go first and we ran......we landed at terminal 3 and had to get to terminal 5....if you've ever been to this airport you can appreciate the time I made....got to security with a minute to spare....they said nope, your flight has quit boarding we won't let you pass go over to the Etihad desk. Well we (the old guy who spoke no english and me) finally found someone from Etihad, I explained to her what happened and she booked me and the old guy on the next flight out the next day which doesn't leave until 8:45pm. She also told us to go back to American Airlines and tell them to give us a hotel voucher.....so I got us squared away there and went back to American Airlines...luckily that guy didn't give us much hassle either, so we had our vouchers and went down to where you wait for the hotel shuttle...talk about a hike!! And so the adventure continues, there's no marking of where to wait for your hotel shuttle, so after looking around and asking I finally called the hotel, she told me where to be and told me shuttle should be there in about 20 minutes.....over an hour later we luckily heard a man call out the hotel and ran over to him....these folks that just walked up thought they were gonna get on...aw hells naw! I was throwing my stuff in the back of the van and loading me and the old guy up, they looked at me like I was rude, I told them I had been waiting for over an hour and there was no way I was not getting on this shuttle...guess I had a crazy enough look on my face...lol. So more stupid stuff happened, asked for a late check out...ya get 30 minutes extra...really?....but finally got to sleep and got downstairs the next day to catch the shuttle to the airport...to sittttttttttttttttt....all day long. Once I was able to get my boarding pass and make it through security I hooked up with some other teachers on the same flight..yay! And was able to use my food vouchers for some free food...double yay!..lol. So I guess it was good that I missed my flight because I made some really good friends at the Chicago airport! Guess you could say we were kind of like the spanish brat pack (me in name..lol) Gamboa, Paiz, and Acuna roaming the streets of Abu Dhabi!!...lol.
And that gets you caught up on getting to Abu Dhabi....Sorry so wordy, just so much, and I didn't even include everything...lol
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