The First Adventure

So, on our way to the DR we found ourselves in quite a long adventure! We got to Logan Airport in Boston and shortly afterward the gossip on the line reached us that the 2 flights out of Boston with Spirit (our airline) were cancelled. American Eagle attendants were then dealing with all of the Spirit passengers trying to book us flights with other airlines. We waited for about 2 hours (from about 4:45 when we got there to about 6:45ish) until it was our turn at the desk. We made some cool friends (including a guy who worked for homeland security and a nasty older couple who kept yelling at the Orbitz and Spirit customer service employees trying to get themselves a flight!) and mostly sat on our luggage while the line behind us kept growing and growing with the rest of the people traveling to Fort Lauderdale with Spirit. Why they hadn't called passengers to tell us the flight was cancelled and to try to figure out new flights is truly a mystery of airline bureaucrazy - my own spelling there!
Well, picking up at 6:45 when they finally called us to the counter, we were excited but also a bit skeptical because it was getting late and we knew probably many people had already taken the leftover seats in other airlines. But in about 15 minutes the lady called us, scribbled a few numbers on the back of our Spirit boarding passes and said we were on a flight with Jet Blue to JFK in NYC, connecting towards Sto Dmgo and leaving in 45 MINUTES! After sitting for what seemed an eternity, we RAN to another terminal with our 3 huge bags 9 (a total of about 170 pounds there) plus all our carry-on bags and my purse down towards terminal C. It was amazing! We picked up an abandoned luggage cart about halfway down, and then ran some more until we got to Jet Blue and found out our luggage was way way way over the weight limit! As a true Dominican, I started to take out 26 pounds out of my bag and 10 out of Isaac's, throw things away and repack the rest to make sure each bag was 50 pounds. Let us say that this part of my culture produces quite a bit of culture shock in Isaac, who was half embarrassed and half annoyed at my frantic attempts to save us $150 in excess weight fees. We finished there and ran to our gate with about 10 minutes before boarding time (our gate was being used by another airplane when we got there so their delay saved us from loosing that flight!). We made it to JFK around 10ish and ate some nasty airport dinner, but at least we had time to call home and tell them we would be getting to Santo Domingo at 3 am instead of 8:30 as our previous itinerary said. Getting out of JFK of course took about another hour once we got unto the plane because of Dominican traveling idiosyncrasies and the extra luggage; the kids and families who want to sit together but have seats all over the plane; the alcohol and shopping bags from the duty free store after the security check points. It is all very Dominican and hardly characteristic of any other group of frequent fliers in the world. But we made it at 4:00 am and it didn’t take THAT long to get our bags or pay the $10 for American alien visitors (yes, this time Isaac was the alien!!) so overall our trip detour was actually pretty nice even compared to our original itinerary. God, once again, took care of things!