The very long day...

Well the 19th December was a real bitch of a day.
Woke up at the crack of dawn ( or earlier because we couldn't sleep).. Left our hotel for peak hour at the train station.. lugging our heavy luggage up the stairs because there are some stations that don't have escalators or elevators. Barely fit on the train- felt like a sardine.
Anyway, a few trains later, we made it to the airport. Waited in line for about an hour. Technical problems with the self check-in so had to wait for someone to serve us.
Our flights were Japan airlines to Chicago, then change to American Airlines for Detroit. Our clerk had trouble understanding this, so the whole check-in thing took way too long. Anyway, we finally get on the plane.. I pop a Valium straight away because I want to get as much sleep as possible (landing in Chicago at 7am the same day..) I got about 30 mins sleep before being WIDE AWAKE all of a sudden. So I watched a bit of tv, had some food and popped another Valium, hoping to finally get some rest. No such luck.
So 11 hours later, we arrived at Chicago, exhausted. We had 2 hours before we needed to be boarding our flight to Detroit. But the line to get our passports stamped was about 800 people long. There were only 3 clerks rostered on and Shane timed the average person to go through was 5mins. There was no way in hell that we were going to make that flight. The valium had started to kick in ( 11 hours too bloody late!) and 3 hours later, it was our turn to give our fingerprints and stamp passports etc. but SO much time had elapsed since we got off the plane, that the monitors had deleted our flight details so we had no idea where our luggage was. At this stage, I just lost it. Bawling my eyes out because I'm just too tired and expecting the worst: will we need to buy new tickets to Detroit? Will we need to buy new luggage? Will we need to spend the night in Chicago?
Luckily I married the best kind of man- the kind that calms me when I'm wound up and comforts me when I'm delirious, tired and upset. We found the bags.
I told the lady who looked at our tickets that we had missed our flights.. She said "oh, you too?" So obviously there were a lot of other annoyed people too.
We waited for another 45 mins or so to see if we can make another flight out the same day. The lady said that they were completely booked out for the day.
But she had a fiddle around and said we could get there by a connecting flight to Kalamazoo (who has ever heard of such a place??!). PRAISE THE LORD, we didn't have to pay a cent and headed straight over to where we needed to be. But waited another bloody hour or so, to go through security. After all that, we were finally able to use a pay phone and call Nathan- who was already at Detroit airport waiting for us!! I was devastated! I hated not being able to contact him and let him know what was happening until we had a stinking pay phone. So instead of arriving at 11am, we would arrive in Detroit at 4:30pm.
So flipping exhausted and dehydrated because we weren't allowed water in the airport until we got passed security.
Kalamazoo was only a 40 min flight so after the last bazillion hours we just endured, it felt like no time.
Once at Kalamazoo, we enjoyed the most amazing cheese pizza of my life before boarding once more for Detroit, trying to keep our eyes open.
It was only an hour or so away and what a sweet sweet relief it was to run into my brother's arms at the end of it all.

Feels so good to be back at their house. Late night chats with Nath and Kel, playing with Isabelle-my niece, waiting for Caleb, my nephew to warm up to me.. Good food, good smells, an amazing shower... And sweet, sweet, glorious bed. Zzz