I started out on Tuesday the 3rd with a flight early in the morning. I couldn´t sleep all night, although I tried. When it comes to planning, I´m just ADD enough that I stay up all night thinking of everything I might need, wondering if I´ve packed everything I´m going to need... at 2 a.m. I realized there was something- I had forgotten my hotel discount card. If I didn´t get on my first standby flight, I was going to need that. Of course, once I realized I would have to wake up around 5 in order to go back to Taylorsville to get it before getting to the airport, I couldn´t sleep the rest of the night.
While getting on the plane, since it was a very small plane they were taking people´s carry-on luggage and tagging it to put in the belly of the plane rather than taking up the limited overhead space. I let them take my main suitcase since I knew I´d just be getting on a bigger plane in Denver anyway. When I got to Denver, however, they said over the loudspeaker on the plane that if we had a connecting flight through to Atlanta they would be checking our bags. I thought nothing of it until I later realized that without an actual "checked baggage" tag, I could not possibly expect to see my bag in Atlanta. I realized that in Atlanta, unfortunately. The baggage claim office guy looked at me like I must be missing a part of my brain not to have thought of that. Little did I know when I started out on this ridiculous voyage... one hour of sleep before a long day of flying pretty much
is a full frontal lobotomy. The clerk asked me if I had my name on it and I vaguely remembered the baggage check guy pulling an old tag with my name on it off to "avoid confusion". When I realized the suitcase was just new enough I might not have put another nametage on it, I got a look like 'this lady should not be traveling'- which was probably true, but when I realized that even after all my planning and losing sleep, my bag might be lost for good, I started crying. Not uncontrollably, but here I am looking like hell anyway and there are no tissues so I´m just crying and wiping snot on my arms and everyone else in the baggage office is toning down their voices because they´re just glad they´re not in whatever mess I´m in.
Glorious. I later found someone who was more helpful and they had Denver agree to get my luggage on the first flight to Santiago so it would meet me there when I arrived.
So, finally we miss the first flight that night- not because there were no empty seats but because all three of us are so tired that we totally miss the fact that after coming back from the duty free shop we have sat down at the wrong gate. Two gates down, they´re calling our names repeatedly and trying to delay the plane since they know we were ·just here a minute ago·.
After getting some serious stinkeye from the ladies at the gate when we finally realize what we´ve done and run just in time to watch the plane drive off, we burst into laughter. It was a bad idea to even attempt to travel on Tuesday.
Wednesday the flight was canceled, meaning it wasn´t worth trying on Thursday. So, yeah. We basically spent a lot of time in the Atlanta Rennaissance catching up on our suntans and wandering in the balmy ass heat. I don´t recommend any of that, it´s really very unpleasant. Especially when you only have the heels your wore on the plane, the flipflops and tank top in your piece of less important luggage, and the clothes you are wearing- including a pair of WOOL SLACKS. IN ATLANTA. BECAUSE YOU HAVE MISPLACED YOUR LUGGAGE.
Christi was nice enough to lend me a pair of sort of sweatpants that tie off at the knee, so here´s me in my one shirt and pair of panties I have to keep washing in the sink with the little packet of detergent Delta gave me and a pair of khaki green sweats everywhere I go. Because it´s so humid in Atlanta, the shirt and panties take forever to dry and I end up having to use a hair dryer on them. Could have used an iron, didn´t think of it, shut up.
Thursday is my birthday, I turn 24 sitting in an airport hotel bar drinking a Tanqueray and tonic and speculating on whether it´s worth it to try to get on a plane when the previous night was canceled. Decided it wasn´t worth it (turns out that is the right choice, for once) and went down to the 5 points area on the MARTA so I could get something else to wear, you know, because I´d rather not wear the same thing I have for three days on my birthday. Call me picky.
5 points is mostly shutting down by 7 or so, there´s not much decent shopping to be found and everything is either an overpriced knockoff of something that might be cute or an overpriced ugly thing. Don´t buy anything, stay in the same outfit. Christi gets sick and barfs in the MARTA garbage. End up in the airport hotel again, drinking a glass of pinot grigio and eating a $12 crabcake by myself, served by a very pregnant woman who is protruding past her little serving vest named Quincetta.
We got on the plane Friday, showed up here yesterday morning. Couldn´t sleep much, shouldn´t have tried. My neck is still all sorts of googly and it keeps threatening to give me a migraine, although somehow I´ve staved that off. Christi´s friend´s sister picked us up and Carol turned out to be the kindest, nicest woman ever and she and her husband fed us and let us play with their adorable spazzy toddlers, named Marlon and Brando.
Not kidding about that. Not kidding at all.
Met my host family today, they are really nice. The 22 year old daughter works in a nearby karaoke bar and recently was offered a car as a gift from one of her patrons, who was enamored of her eyes. He didn´t know they were grey contact lenses.
The best part of today, so far? Bananas with palm honey and little fried potato balls, and the almost fully reclining seats on the bus from Santiago to Valparaiso. I´m getting a phone tomorrow. That is all the update I can muster right now and you should feel very special that I´m not sleeping right now.
Maquelle desperately trying to dance with Chilean traditional dancers. She did a better job than most, I'm afraid.
