Flying is Stressful

Yesterday was a long and semi draining physically and emotionally. First of all, yesterday I left Camp MiVoden, which I have grown to love over the past six weeks. Saying goodbye to so many people, was tough for me, there was a few times when I had to excuse myself quickly from people in order to hide any stray tears that were attempting to escape. After being dropped off at the airport, I boarded my plane to Chicago. I ended up next to a military guy, which as of lately seems to be happening to me a lot. In general this one was nice, but threw my off a little bit when he offered to buy me a drink on the plane. Declined and enjoyed Sprite and soon we were in Chicago. Until we hit the run way I hadn't even thought about my next flight, because there was an hour scheduled inbetween. When I glanced at my watch though, I realized that due to our flight getting off late, etc. I only had less than 25 minutes until my connecting flight was leaving. On top of that there was no place for our plane to go to so we sat on the runway for 10 minutes. Getting nervous, I send a quick prayer up to God asking Him to hold my plane for some reason or to help me deal with the situation and be at peace with whatever happened. As quickly as I tried to get off the plane, by the time I got off I only had 10 minutes to get to my flight in completly different terminal. I found the shuttle, but had to wait 5 minutes for the shuttle to arrive. By the time the shuttle boarded and we made it to the other terminal, I had only 1-2 minutes to get to my gate. I literally ran the whole way, but upon arrival to the gate, the door was shut and the plane was backing out. At first I was utterly discouraged. This was something that I had always dreaded would happen to me. Luckily there were two other women in the same predicament as me. I followed them to the customer service desk and found out that there were no flight going out until the next am. With no other choice I booked a 6:30 am flight to Knoxville. The two other women decided to take the hotel room discount, but I really wasn't excited about spending $60 to spend a few hours in a hotel. My time clock was still pretty off, and I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep for at least 3-4 hours. So I parted with the two women and decided to tough it and spend the night in Chicago's airport. At first I just wandered around, got some food, and returned some phone calls. Around 11 PM I finally wandered back to my gate and tried to find a comfortable place to sleep. Sadly all of the chairs had armrests so the nasty floor appeared to be my best bet. At first I was excited to see so many people around, but then became self concious as I laid out my towel and made a pillow out of a assortment of dirty clothes in my carry on bag. As I tried to get some sleep, many people came by, and some of them gave me the oddest stares. I wondered what they were thinking about me. I truly felt like a homeless person shunned by society. After many hours of attempts of sleeping I finally got up and started wandering the halls. As I went from terminal to terminal I began to not feel quite so out of place as I noticed at least two-five people sleeping in most seating areas around each gate. I was not alone with all of the janitors and fast food employees! As I walked around in search of a Starbucks, a security guard assisted me with directions and commented that usually there were many more people sleeping in the airport. Finally 6:30 arrived and I was able to head back to good old Knoxville. As I boarded the plane, stowed my carry ons, and sat down I thought throught the whole event. Amazingly the whole experience had gone well and I realized that I had stayed positive throughout the whole thing! I couldn't believe with all that had happened accumulatively over the past day that I was not bawling. Then I remembered my prayer that I had sent up to God. Once again, He had pulled through for me and perhaps taught me an important lesson about being flexible and open to His ways I get read to head out for Peru.