Apologies!!

Hello everyone! Sorry it has been so long since I've updated this. December became a very busy month for me and then someone stole my laptop charger… so it was impossible for me to access anything on my laptop until I arrived back in the States for Christmas. A quick update on my trip home, and then the next few entries will have to do with life in Dakar right before I left.

I was scheduled to leave on December 22nd at 3:35am (early Saturday morning). After arriving at the airport at midnight (after a long day of celebrating Tabaski… biggest Muslim holiday of the year), I went through security and made my way to the plane. I boarded at 3am, and waited on the plane for over an hour and a half before they announced that the flight was cancelled. Some part of the airplane needed to be replaced, and the part was not available in Africa or Europe… so it was being flown over from Atlanta, which was the destination of my flight. It took until 6am to actually exit the plane. And then we waited for 2 hours for our luggage. And then another 2 hours to be shuttled to a hotel which they had booked for us. I arrived at the hotel at 10am not having slept in over 24 hours. The hotel was nice, a beach resort in Ngor… it had hot water and a beach, so I could not complain. The other passengers who were all on their way back to the States from South Africa found plenty to complain about. I ate the free breakfast with other passengers, gave them tips on what to do in Dakar, then retreated to my room and crashed and slept til about 5:30pm. At that time I ate the free dinner they provided. Then I ventured out to buy overpriced shampoo and took a hot bath, the first time I'd had access to hot water since arriving in Senegal. We had a 3:30am wake up call and a shuttle to the airport at 4:30am (early Sunday morning). I was at the airport by 4:40am, where we sat and waited while they reprocessed everyone and gave us all new boarding passes, even though we were all the same passengers boarding the exact same plane as the day before. That lasted until 8:30am. The flight was supposed to leave at 9am, but was delayed again. It was a bit ridiculous. For instance, at around 10am they made an announcement for all of us to go to a lounge for free beverages, and then we arrived in the lounge and they told everyone to leave but families with small children. There were very few people working at the airport that morning and I was shocked that the communication failed so badly. We finally boarded the plane and left a little after noon. I got to Atlanta with 6 minutes to run to my gate… I felt like I was in the movie Home Alone running through the airport… but unlike the people in the movie, I missed my flight by 3 minutes. So I waited around and was transferred from flight to flight, ended up waiting an additional 4 hours until I finally got a flight to O'Hare. During my time at the Atlanta airport I dealt with very unhappy Delta people who kept lying to me, my cell phone died, my credit card was blocked, and I developed a migraine. It was not exactly the best few hours ever. Eventually when I arrived at O'Hare at 10:40pm, I made the discovery that my luggage did not make the same flight. It was quite an experience. But that's ok, all is fine now. I got my luggage when I finally arrived in Grand Rapids. Christmas with the family was wonderful.

Now I'm sitting in an airport in Detroit at the moment on my way back to Dakar. The trip was incredibly short, even more so due to the delays and being exhausted because of them.