The Tale of a Bucket of Gatorade

My journey started at 5 am on the 22nd of March. I know my luck traveling and did not expect this to be a graceful adventure, especially since I had to travel through O'Hare Airport, a place that gives me never-ending problems when traveling. First, I was tricked by the passengers on the shuttle-ride over to the airport into thinking that I was traveling on Delta. The driver asked where everyone was going and everyone said Delta, so naturally I assumed I was doing what everyone else was doing. After standing in a long line, the Kiosk told me I did not exist, I realized my mistake, and tried again in the United line. Then came the dreaded weighing of the suitcases. I knew they were both overweight. I knew my big backpack did not fully fit on the scale so even when that is overweight no one ever knows it but me. I was banking on the tires of the other suitcase touching outside of the scale, unfortunately I was not so lucky the second time around: 70 pounds! I was not about to pay the $150 fine and the woman behind the counter was a stickler for following the rules so I could not even pull the "but my violin isn't really a carry-on item" bit. That 20 pounds went straight into my backpack and violin case, making walking a much bigger pain. During the lightening process all the woman kept telling me was that she was doing me a big favor and that I would be better off listening to her, this was completely not true, but made her feel better about making my load heavier. I had to carry one of my buckets of gatorade powder with me because that was a good 4 pounds and I could not bare parting with it.

I got to Chicago just fine, made my tight connection, was on the take-off pad, when the pilot announces that something on the wing was not latching correctly and we had to go back for a mechanical check. They let people off the plane and said they would announce in an hour whether we were leaving or whether the flight was cancelled. Of course it was cancelled and I got in a line behind the 300 other people on the plane who beat me there. This is when I started calling United Airlines like mad. I thought seriously about dumping the gatorade after getting disconnected 3 times, but then I finally got ahold of a helpful agent. She told me I had 20 minutes to get to a new gate to take a flight to North Carolina that would then go on to Washington. I booked it over there, feeling a little bad for kind of cutting in line via phone, but not bad enough not to do it.

I got to Washington in time, saw Sarah's (one of the other volunteers) face as soon as I walked through the door and almost died I was so happy. On top of that, she offered to help me carry things and immediately took the gatorade off of my hands. 16 hours later, we happily arrived in Johannesburg. Unfortunately, due to my sporadic change of flights, my luggage did not come. They told me it was on its way to be delivered to me tonight, but that never happened. Hopefully tomorrow.

We are staying with the sisters currently, we move into our house tomorrow. Everyone is really nice and are so happy to have us here. It is a pretty cool place. It is not the city I thought it would be, it is more like a really big town. Very green, the days are warm (like 70) and the nights are cold, just how I like it. Sarah slept for about 15 hours last night, I only made it about 12 because I randomly woke up at 4:30 am and was wide awake, then around 7:30 I decided I was tired again and that lasted til about 2:30 in the afternoon. The nuns probably thought we were dead. But alas, we are not, we are healthy and happy and I am pleased to report that the gatorade is too.