Stuck in San Fran =/

Well unfortunately my first blog is not one of a happy arrival in Taipei.   And, I fought against whether I wanted to post all of this or not, however, I have 12 hours to kill in the airport so I really just don't have anything else to do.

Warning:  this will be extremely lengthy so don't start reading unless you have time to finish.

I realize now how many errors I made (hindsight is 20/20).  When the travel agent lady told me two weeks ago she would send me an updated itinerary and I never received it, I should have called.  When the itinerary said I had one stop in Denver but didn't give any other layover info, I should have inquired.  When I got off the plane in San Francisco, went to Eva Airlines, per my itinerary, and they didn't have any record of my information nor any of the other names from my group, I should have asked if any othe airlines were flying to Taipei that night.  When I realized I wasn't going to be getting on that flight and my luggage was being sent straight through to Taipei, I should have asked about it then, instead of doing it an hour and a half later to then find out my luggage went to China Airlines, not Eva Airlines.

You get the idea, not my fault that the wrong  itinerary was given to me, but a lot of shoulda coulda woulda's

SO, after missing the flight at 1:20am San Fran time (4:20 according to my internal clock from Indy) and crying so much that my head was pounding, I decided I was too exhausted to function and had to sleep.  I cannot explain how impossible it would have been to sleep where I was so I went looking for a taxi to take me to a hotel.  There was naturally, in coordination with the rest of the day, some difficulty in doing this task, but is far less dramatic in comparison.  Oh, and I called and woke my mom up at this time so she could talk me through some things to do because I could not come up with clear thoughts whatsoever, therefore keeping her up all morning with me, sorry!

When I got to the hotel, the clerk was extremely kind and let me push a late check-out back to 2:00pm.  While checking in, there was an extremely creepy middle eastern guy walking around the lobby on his phone.  He wasn't creepy because he was middle eastern, he was creepy because he couldn't actually talk, even though he appeared to be on the phone, he could only make short grunts and high pitched noises occasionally.  Something was clearly wrong with him on top of the fact that he appeared to be drunk.  Keep in mind this is like 3am which makes everything seem even more frightening.  As I signed the paperwork and the clerk was telling me how to get to my room, grunting guy made his way toward the elevator.  The clerk stopped me and recommended that I let him go ahead of me on the elevator and made a drinking motion to indicate that the guy was, as I had observed, not in his right mind.  So I waited, heard the elevator ding, and then heard the doors shut.  I turned around to head towards the elevator and there's grunting guy, creepily standing against the wall peeking around the corner at me!  He was freaking waiting for me to get on the elevator with him.  Well my exhaustion and stress collided full force with fear and I burst into tears.  The clerk came around the corner and walked me to the elevator, then stood in the doorway while it shut to keep grunting guy out while he stood behind the clerk staring at me and grunting.  OMG!  This elevator escort did not assuage my fears enough to stop me from bolting out of the elevator, running to my room, and quickly dead-bolting the door.  Somehow my fear overrode my exhaustion and prevented me from sleeping for quite a while.

For some insane reason I woke up after about 3 short hours of sleep and then couldn't get back to sleep because I was too worried about getting everything worked out.  So I started making more phone calls, couldn't get ahold of anybody of course because it's Saturday, and then decided to call China Airlines to check on my luggage.  Turns out there was a reason my luggage went on China Airlines, because I was supposed to be on it too.  They found me on the flight I had missed and put me on standby for the next one, at 1:35am tonight/tomorrow morning.  If I can't get on the flight, the next one doesn't leave until August 4th!  I tried to go back to sleep at the hotel, thinking at least I knew somewhat what was going on now, but couldn't.  I got up, took a nice long hot shower and watched some Hannah Montana to try and de-stress =)   I got on a shuttle back to the airport and started checking out the international terminals only to find that China Airlines' only flight is the one I'm trying to get on and they don't have a counter open until 4 hours before the flight.  Awesome

SO, I'm chillin' at the airport.  Finally got some food.  Doin' a little blogging.  Trying not to cry anymore.  I'm certain things will be better once I get there and get settled, but right now I'm really struggling with figuring out why I shouldn't just hop on a plane back to Indy =/

      <------ My little work cubby at the airport