…And we’re off!

 Packed up and at last it was time to go! I drove my 2 students to OHare airport in Chicago, found parking, and we got checked in and made our flight to London Heathrow in plenty of time. That was the easy part….

One of the students (don’t worry, K, I won’t tell who it was!) was extremely airsick for most of the flight, despite having taken medication. She hung in like a trooper, but I’m sure she has passed better nights! 

As if trying to help her as much as possible wasn’t enough, a few hours into the flight the man directly next to me across the aisle had a grand mal seizure on his way back from the bathroom, fell down and hit his head!To nobody’s surprise, there isn’t a lot of room in economy to perform first aid! The crew got him back into his seat before he had a second seizure, but eventually he was stabilized and the flight was able to continue without being diverted. A bit more excitement than I really needed!

Since we had a sick student, we ended up not going in to London for the day; attending to her health was obviously more important. By the time our flight was scheduled, she was feeling fine and ready to fly. Unfortunately, our plane was not.

They found some kind of technical problem with the plane we were supposed to take, so our flight was delayed, initially for 1 hour, then for 3, then back down to 2, but in a different terminal! We eventually got on the flight and departed a little over 2 hours late.

So of course we arrived in Johannesburg over 2 hours late, which would not have been a problem as we had a scheduled 3-hour layover. Except that after arriving 2 hours late, it took us over 2 MORE hours to clear immigration (short staffed). So we missed our connection to Hoedspruit. The airline automatically re-booked 2 of us on the last flight out for the day, but re-booked the third for the following day. In the time it took (stood in 3 lines) to get the issue resolved, that flight left without us. And the airline calmly informed us that they would be happy to re-book us on the same flight…2 days later!!! 

Missing 2 days of our adventure just wasn’t something we were willing to do, so we rented a car and drove (a manual, on the left side of the road, through the mountains in the dark) 5 hours to get here! 

We arrived to a lovely welcome, hot food, hot showers and horizontal sleeping space, the first we’d seen in 3 days. We were all dead to the world!



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