Au revoir Pittsburgh, Bonjour France!

Bonjour tout le monde! Hello everyone! Today begins (hopefully) the best month ever! I'm currently in the Pittsburgh airport, waiting for the first leg of my flight. I'm headed to New York first, then Amsterdam, then Lyon! I have a long day ahead of me and I'm feeling a lot of emotions (mostly extremely nervous and extremely excited)!

I spent hours yesterday packing, I think I underestimated the difficulty of fitting your entire life into a suitcase and backpack. Nothing felt real until I started packing, and then the realization began to set in.

As I am writing, I'm sitting in the Pittsburgh airport and behind me there are people talking on the phone in French. I'm surprised by how much I can pick up but there is still a lot that I can't follow. Listening to a phone call is exactly like the listening activities in high school french, so there's a weird sense of nostalgia in that.

I'm hoping for no delays and smooth flights! I'll hopefully sleep on the flight to Amsterdam and wake up in Europe!

the sunset at the Pittsburgh airport

....so all of that was typed before everything went down hill. Shortly after I put my laptop away, my flight out of Pittsburgh was delayed 23 minutes because of weather in New York. 23 minutes turned to an hour which turned to three hours. At this point, all of the restaurants had closed and I would definitely miss my connection. I went into a littleeee bit of a panic mode, overall just tired, frustrated, and hungry. I went to the Delta workers and they booked me another overseas flight, this time to Paris, that left later that night as well as booked me a backup the next day in case we missed it. I tried to find any restaurants open and found that the Starbucks hadn't put down its gate so I went in and asked if they were closed-and immediately started crying. The girl working felt bad and made me my drink and gave it to me for free, so that was an upside of the experience.

By the time we take off, our layover reached four hours, and it was 9 pm. As we are sitting on the flight I can't hold it together anymore and start crying again-mostly out of frustration and missing my mom. The lady next to me noticed and started talking to me, telling me she had a daughter my age and asking me about my trip. I think if she hadn't started a conversation i would've cried the whole way there.

We land after a smooth flight, only to find out there are no gates available for us. Originally it was estimated to be 15 minutes, and we ended up sitting on the runway for two hours. At this point I had missed my new connection as well as a plane my dad had found online-and was stuck with the connection the following afternoon. It is past midnight and the majority of the people on our plane missed their connections. We all went to the Delta help desk, which turned out to not be helpful. I waited for over an hour and never spoke to an employee. I was trying to ask for a hotel or something and to make sure I was on the flight for tomorrow. I contacted a virtual agent while in line and while they couldn't get me a hotel, they did make sure my flights were booked. I decided to call it and left the Delta line.

Before getting off the plane, the mom next to me had given me her phone number in case I needed anything. She missed her connection as well and was staying the night at the airport until her new connection. I texted her and we found a spot to camp for the night. It felt kind of like the church lockins I did in youth group-but even less comfortable. I think I ended up getting around 3 hours of sleep.

I'll pick up my adventures in JFK in my next post,

à plus tard,

Maggie

(written May 16 (and a little May 17))