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Photo cred: My amazing sister, who is a wiz at photography. Photo of the HUGE Christmas tree in BWI airport.

Day One: Journal entry began at 10:42 PM EST, December 17, 2017

We begin the day at 8 AM, quickly getting dressed and on the road (though I created a small hitch when I realized I had packed all of my long pants in a fit of packing frustration).

We drove five hours from our home in (censored location) to BWI in Baltimore, Maryland. During the trip, I finished Ranger’s Apprentice Book 11, The Lost Stories, by John Flanagan.

(Food Diary up to this point, McDonald’s for breakfast, and Wendy’s for Lunch….hOW ExOtic)

So, we get through TSA relatively quickly, eat a Panini for an early dinner (I save half of mine for the Plane as our airline doesn’t serve meals or snacks), and wait for another hour in our terminal.

So we have ONE employee checking us in. She’s not using a scanner or anything, and she’s looking at our passports and our faces like a visual check or something it was weird. The good thing she did was set it up that people in the back of the plane got seated first, but she goofed up. She said all paper pass holders come over here get checked in Blah Blah Blah. Then all of a sudden she said people from rows 15 downward (regardless if you had a paper pass or digital) should check in. She completely forgot the people who were seated in the back with digital passes and guess who was in that group.

So we’re in line, and the doors are being opened intermittently, and we see this girl being boarded….with a police escort. Mom heard things in the lobby and here is her situation paraphrased:

She tried to get into the country, with falsified documents, got caught by customs, spent the night in jail, and is now being deported with a police escort. And mom heard this phrase (I will make it as exact as possible):

“So what you’re saying is, is that if I had gone to New York, then I could have gotten away with it because it’s better and more things slip.”

This lady…I mean, WOW.

Anyway, she’s seated in row thirty-seven, so she ain’t going anywhere.

So we get on the plane, it’s hot, it’s stuffy and we’re getting bored because we want to get our things to do out when we’re in the air. So we’re sitting on this plane for an hour. There’s a kid across the aisle and a row back that’s just being a kid. You know, happy, but being loud because of kids being kids. He’s also bi-lingual like his parents, switching between English and Norweigan. Honestly, Norweigan spoken by a kid sounds like kid babble, anyway.

So, we realize something’s wrong when the girl under police escort is taken off the plane first, most likely to be put in jail for the night. So it takes us forever to get off the plane, and then get the news that one of our pilots is in the hospital and the replacement can’t fly because we didn’t get up in the air quick enough. Blah Blah BLAH. No chance of flying tonight.

They don’t really give instructions to get our bags (we checked two) and we go to the big plaza we came in. My sister and I stayed in the plaza while my parents looked for the bags, which were just sitting in a random claim, and were being brought up by a FELLOW PASSENGER on OUR plane.

Before our parents left to look for them, the flight attendants and one remaining pilot, came out with their bags. When asked where things were they were like,

“We don’t know, we don’t care, we’re going to sleep. Have fun, peasants.” They were much more “polite” but still, that was the jist. And walked away.

My sister took amazing pictures of the Christmas tree. This one is one of my favorites. 

Find my sister’s DA account at Kool-Cap DA

We see a whole hoard of other passengers from our plane come to the plaza and the kid from the plane is in the lobby. The kid is falling apart, I feel sorry for him, he’s tired, bored, probably hungry and it’s so late at night. The reason I bring this up is that he’s speaking, but it’s Norweigan. So I begin to crack up where I sit, he’s crying in Norwegian.

Anyway, I have a phonecall with my friend Jenn for about an hour. To be honest I usually text with anyone who is not my parents, because they prefer to talk over the phone.

Anyway, after an hour of sitting in the plaza, we finally get our bags, wait forever for the shuttle and get to the hotel. Also, I might add that our next flight is 4 PM EST on Monday (Today).

So we get to a hotel, drop everything off, and then go to Cracker Barrel. We are tired and we want some comfort food, ya’ll. So here’s what was wrong with the meal. We were too tired to go anywhere else.

• Our waiter didn’t tend to his FOUR tables. Including us, and two of them were here longer than us.
• It took us an hour to get drinks.
• We never got our biscuits.
• No silverware (We actually had to go to the metre de to get some)
• No straws
• No refills.
• Two hours for food
• He forgot four side dishes
• Two of our delivered side dishes was cold
• My parent’s meal was cold.

And his excuse was, “I’m having a bad day.”

In my head I was like, please shut up. But whatever. We got half off our meal, and we get outside. It’s raining.

We get to the hotel and collapse into bed. So here are the positive things about yesterday and today.

• We get to eat. The airline had no meals or snacks, that’s why I saved half of my sandwich (which I ate in the terminal after we got off the plane).
• We got to sleep at the Embassy Suites. And I even got a comfy bed to myself because my sister wanted to be in the small living room by herself and volunteered the couch bed. THANK YOU.
• Mom got an omelet from the chef this morning. She loves that so much, and won’t let us forget it.
• We got to shower.
• We get to go to the bathroom, that’s not on a plane.
• We didn’t die because of a shortage of pilots.

So all in all, yesterday was terrible. BUT today looks pretty good.