Maya Angelou is famous for this quote:
“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas lights.”
I love Maya, but I would add to that.
You can tell a hell of a lot about a person from the way they handle a cancelled flight.
My flight from Dallas/Fort-Worth to Bogota was cancelled because a member of the crew was no longer able to fly, and they couldn’t pull another in that night. Cue 200 passengers, most of whom don’t speak English, having to be rescheduled for a flight pattern and location that isn’t all that common.
You can be like the 13 year old girl, Nina, who stepped into translate for the American Airline’s staff. Or you can be like the 45 year old Latina who had to be pulled out by security.
Anyway, my flight was cancelled. But, because I speak English, I called the number provided by American Airlines and got a reschedule pretty quickly. I stayed the night in the hotel they provided, left Dallas today at 2:00, flew to Miami, and am flying out of Miami tonight at 8:00, putting me in Bogota around 11:00.
The staff were all super sweet if you made an effort to understand it from their position (they all had to stay later than their shift to deal with 200 people speaking another language and book 200 seats that basically didn’t exist), and they provided me with a hotel, a shuttle to and from the hotel, and food vouchers.
So I get to the hotel, and I got a whole king bed to myself, except for the bathroom light was broken. Every time I turned it on a weird, dim blue hue emanated, and this creepy fan came on. Neither of which I liked, so I just turned on all of the lights in the entire room, threw the bathroom door all the way open, and took my shower that way.
I woke up and headed to the airport, and in the shuttle with me was a super sweet family- Daniella, Herman, and their five-month-old son, and it turns out they were going to Bogota to get married. I mentioned I was going to Ibague and their faces dropped. “Herman grew up in Ibague, he’s from there!” Daniella exclaimed.
So now we’re best-shuttle-friends or something because they offered to take me to Bogota for a weekend and show me around, and to contact his relatives in Ibague to help me out if I needed it.
And then I had my flight to Miami, where a) every person ever was headed for the World Cup, and b) I had a window seat and my row-partners were a sweet woman who spent the flight talking to me about her life (she literally has traveled everywhere), and a man that smelled like sour pimiento cheese and snored quite audibly.
This is a picture of him and the other sleeping men (I and Mrs. Travels A Lot found it entertaining).
Now I’m sitting in Miami after almost 48 hours of travel, eating a guava and cheese pastry, about to take off for Bogota.
Traveler at the Edge 