a lot of things have happened since my last post. first off, i am now in the philippines. flew back last december 15 to spend christmas with my family. lu and i left the apartments that were our homes for the past three months with bags heaped with pasalubongs and padalas. roland was kind enough to accompany us to the airport. we left on a convoy passing by the gas station first to refill our tanks. but because of the stoplights, the convoy was gone soon. me being the last of the three cars was the one left behind first. i was a bit nervous eventhough i had a very good idea of how to get to the airport. without a cellphone at hand, i could not ask my companions to wait for me and so i drove on. i caught up with roland soon. but since i was in the fast lane, i had to go ahead of him --- that is, as soon as he mouthed "airport" to me.
i arrived at the avis rental area without too much of a hitch. that is, until i was waiting for more than 15 minutes without my companions showing up. good thing the avis attendants were nice enough to contact roland on his cellphone. they were already at the terminal! i rushed off to the shuttle going to the check-in counters. but that confusion was actually just the start of a very stess-filled trip back home.
we checked in at the united airlines counter. after quite a wait, we were informed that all flights going to chicago are delayed. this was a major dilemma since we only had 50 minutes between our cincinnati-chicago and chicago-los angeles flight! the next flight out of chicago would not arrive in time for us to board the los angeles-singapore leg and we would not be able to go home at all because there were no available seats in the flight going to manila! after a lot of prayers, prodding and pleading, the united airlines people booked us in a cincinnati-cleveland-los angeles flight in a different airline. that would give us only 50 minutes to board our connecting flight to singapore.
more bad luck came our way... delta airlines could not issue our boarding passes because we were lacking some documents that united airlines was supposed to give us. with very little time after our boarding passes were issued, we had to go through a "random check" with the airport security. we had to wait until they checked our bags thoroughly. we almost did not make it to the flight out of cincinnati, we were panting so hard when we reached our seats!
our flight out of cleveland was more relaxed, though. we had time to call singapore airlines to inform them that we would probably be late checking in for the flight in los angeles but the person we talked to said that she could not assure that the plane would wait for us. problem still not solved.
when we arrived in los angeles, we had to test our leg strength and our lung endurance again as we ran from the domestic to the international terminal. we actually tried to wait for a shuttle but it took too long, we decided to run instead. good thing we didn't have to pass through immigration at this point or else we would have missed the plane for sure! we took our seats exhausted but happy to have made it.
we were going home!
we thought we ran out of bad luck at this point but nooooo. we waited for our bags... but no sign of them until there were no bags left coming out of the conveyor. our bags were lost! well, not actually lost... they were still in singapore and we need to come back after 7 hours to get the bags. better than the other passengers who did not even know where their luggages were, i guess.
so much hassle getting home. but we're home... and that's all that matters.
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