Cat de mult ne suferim din cauza omenilor!

So...I missed my flight. Regardless of what others believe about being "stuck" on vacation for 2 extra days, I gotta tell you, it is lousy! I left for the airport a little before 11am for my 1:55pm flight. I knew the bus takes an hour when there is traffic, I did not however, remember that in Romania you should always expect the unexpected. Now just one little hiccup, no big deal, but nobody can recover from 2 disasters. Marie walked me down to the bus and right as we got there they were closing all the streets in Piata Unirii. We asked the lady at the ticket booth when the bus would be coming and she explained that the streets were closed and she didn't know why, for how long, or if the bus would come at all. Nice...she pointed us to the next stop on a road that wasn't closed. We waited until the bus should have come again (seeing for ourselves that it was closed because of a marathon) and I decided to take the metro to the next main piata to catch the bus there. It came quickly enough but by this time it was noon...no big deal, if it takes an hour to get there I still have an hour to check in and go through security, Otopeni is not a big airport. As I squished on the bus (when I say squished, you have NO IDEA!) We seemed to be in an awful lot of slow traffic, I knew we were in trouble when I saw boys who had gotten off 3 stops before passing us on foot. Turns out there was a huge car show out by the airport, drawing even more traffic than usual, BAH! Is it too much to ask for there to be a little city planning, huh? By the time I ran into the airport, almost in tears and found the counter and asked to check in it was 1:35. I am fully aware of the across the board rule, no one goes after the 30 minute prior mark, so what did I do, I pulled out all my best romanian and through big fat tears I argued and begged to no avail. I was sent to the ticket counter where the lady told me I could go on the next flight for $200 extra and handed me an itinerary for TUESDAY! It is a really good thing I never learned how to be mean and curse in Romanian because I was limited in the abuse I could fling at this unhelpful woman. She refused to look for a sooner flight, insisting that the direct flight I was on from OTP to JFK did not depart every day and she could not change my route. Another girl about my age ran up at this point having missed the same flight and seemed to have a little more persuasive power. I let her interrupt knowing she might be able to help us both. Bottom line, after more tears from both of us, some yelling from all three parties it looks like the other girl and I will be on the same flight Tuesday afternoon. She is missing exams at her university in Chicago so I cannot complain too much. Though I will miss work I know that Michelle is kind and loves me and wouldn't fire me because of this. The girl offered to let me stay with her if I didn't have somewhere to stay. It made me remember that I love Romania and Romanians, mostly. Luckily I knew I could stay with Sora P. and I headed dejectedly back into the city. I fought for a seat on the bus and listened to my iPod the whole way back. I knew the sisters would be at the capela for conference so I trudged across town with all my luggage in the rain (I know, really, worse and worse). Conference was amazing and I think it even crossed my mind that I was glad I had missed my flight so I could listen to the wonderful talks. I will leave around 9am on Tuesday to catch my 1:55 flight, I'm not taking any chances!