I finally made my way to San Jose

I wrote this last night but the internet is still not solid, so it didn’t work long enough to post. Sorry again that it’s been so long.

Where to begin? Where to begin? I'm sorry that this is the first time that I'm getting on to blog, but we just figured out how to get wireless internet in our hotel rooms. Right Now it is 10:45pm here on Friday June 20th, and I have never been this tired. We are being kept busy every second of the day. I left my hotel room at 7:30 this morning and didn't get a free minute until around 6ish when we were allotted ten minutes free time before dinner. I have so much to tell, but I'm not sure if I will have the energy to stay up too much longer.

I guess I should start at the beginning. Thursday morning ...
I was ruthlessly dragged from bed at around 3:30am (Raleigh time) and got to the airport at around 4:15am. My flight boarded at 5:30am and we were off by 6am. This is when the fun began. I was to fly out of the Raleigh airport and arrive at the Dallas TX airport at around 7:45am Dallas time (one hour behind). That's not exactly what happened. Instead we were informed of major storms hitting the Dallas area and of the delays they would cause. After circling the airport about five times waiting for our turn to land, we were told by our pilot that we didn't have the fuel to continue circling for the predicted 30 minutes that it would take for our turn to come about, so we were diverting to an Oklahoma airport (I think) to refuel. That was fun :) When we finally got fuel we had to travel back to Dallas and wait once again for our turn to land. As we finally pulled onto the runway, the very sweet elderly lady (with a passion for conversation) that I was sitting next to pointed out the fact that we had been on that plane for five hours. Did I mention all the fun we had? Needless to say ... I missed my connecting flight and had the honor to stand in line for about an hour to wait for a new flight. When I reached the front of the line however, they informed me that I wouldn't be able to catch another flight directly to San Jose so they changed my entire flight plan.

Form there I had to catch the sky tram to another terminal so that I could wait some more for my new flight. After all of the delays (apparently the airport was struck by lightning twice so It messed up all of everything) I finally got on the plane and was on my way to Orange County and the Santa Ana airport (Sah-nah-tah-ah-nah). As was to be expected, I missed my connecting flight, and was rescheduled again to San Jose. This gave me another few hours to wait in the cramped room that is the Santa Ana airport, where apparently the air conditioner was broken. When I arrived in San Jose we were horded down to the terminal and out into a parking deck full of waiting busses. After a bit of a hunt, I found my bus and was finally on my way to the hotel.

Thursday June 19th was one of the longest days of my life to date. But I finally, after 13 hours of airport, made it to what is sure to be one of the best experiences of my life … and now I have a good story to tell :)