Travel War Stories

Yesterday was a very long day. I got up at 4 a.m. to head to the Madison airport, took that short little flight, then spent 3 hours in terminal C at O'Hare (I walked up and down a few times deciding which salad to buy for my lunch).

When my plane to Mexico City finally started to board, it was overbooked and quickly became a seating nightmare for the flight attendants (only one spoke Spanish, so that didn't help). The only thing that made the half hour waiting for people to get seated better was an old grandpa looking man asking me if my water bottle had tequila in it. I wish.

We were already a half hour late when they said they needed to wait for a couple suitcases. Finally, we pulled out of the gate but we didn't get very far before they had us turn around to add 30 more suitcases. Ugh. At this point I was feeling really guilty because I knew someone was meeting me at the house I'm renting a room in and I certainly wouldn't be there on time. Since I left my iPhone at home, I wasn't able to send an email or text to let them know. We finally took off an hour and a half late. The flight was full of kids and 3 hours and 45 minutes is a long time to listen to babies screaming. I was so happy when we finally landed.

By the time I got through customs and my taxi driver figured out where my house was (he asked about 20 people on the street, including talking to another taxi driver through the car windows while we were both driving on the highway), it was 4:30 and I was an hour and a half late. I felt really bad, but so goes traveling. I probably will avoid flying United to Mexico again.

It was pouring rain and luckily my host drove me around in her car to show me the neighborhood and take me to the grocery store. I bought a 5 gallon container of water that I can already tell probably won't last me the week. After dinner and a shower, I went out with some of my housemates to a friend's birthday party and finally crashed at midnight.

This morning the weather is gorgeous, but since its the rainy season there will be more thunderstorms in the late afternoon. I'm sad to say my rain boots did not make it. My suitcase was 5 pounds over weight and they had to stay with Aaron. I'll be picking up a cheaper pair here as soon as I can.

Unfortunately it will be a while before I can post many pictures. I am so used to taking photos with my iPhone that I forgot I need a cord to transfer pictures from my digital camera to my computer. I remembered to charge the battery and bring the charger with me, but totally forgot about the cord until this morning when I took some pictures and realized I couldn't get them on my computer. Duh. Hopefully Aaron can send me the cord. For now you'll have to settle with this picture of me getting some sun on the roof.

I am staying in the top floor room for at least the next two weeks, so I get to use the roof for now.