12/26/10

Today when I woke up, I saw the much talked about blizzard, but I desperately hoped it wouldn’t affect my flight. As I was getting some last minute packing done, I realized that I did not have any gum, which is just my thing. After my brother loaded by bags in the car and shoveled some snow away from the car, I rushed to the corner store to get my gum. As we left for the airport, I realized that I should have left earlier because the roads were so slippery that we had to drive at a really slow speed.

When we finally got to the airport, we found that we were so late that there was no line of passengers in front of the Turkish airlines desk. But thankfully, I was still able to get my boarding pass register my suitcases. As I got to the waiting area for Turkish airlines, I saw a couple of familiar faces from the orientation for this program. We sat and talked about ourselves, our backgrounds, and how excited and scared we were about going away to a foreign country by ourselves.

We’d learned that the 4:45 flight had been delayed to 5:30 and was then further delayed to 6:30. But when it was delayed to 7:30, everyone was convinced that it would no longer be delayed and that we would fly out tonight. Unfortunately, the flight was then delayed for 8:30. At this point, passengers started boarding the plane. I looked out the window of the plane and wondered how we could possibly fly out in this blizzard and prayed that everything would be okay. They airline kept us on the plane for an hour and a half before they informed us that the Port Authority was having a meeting about whether or not we would fly out that night. Later, we learned that they did not approve of the departure, and for the first time in my life, I had to exit a plane that never departed.

When everyone got off the plane, we all demanded and we be taken to a hotel. But due to the storm, all hotel rooms were booked and we had to spend the night at the airport. At this point, everyone was furious. We all wondered why the airline did not just cancel the flight before hand so that we wouldn’t have had to spend the night sleeping in uncomfortable chairs and a cold, hard floor. The blizzard was so severe that it even prevented our loved ones from picking us up.

So we spent the night at the airport, ate overpriced airport food, and tried to pass the time by playing games. Turkish airlines assured us that we would fly out at 1:00 the next day.

 Two of the ten students stuck at JFK Airport due to the blizzard