20 Hours in Bethlehem
Hello friends!
It’s been quite a while since I’ve last written. I feel as though these first two weeks of the semester flew by! My semester had a slightly rough beginning; for a while I feared I would never make it back to campus.
If you’ve read my bio, you know that I am obsessed with the early 2000s political drama The West Wing (please watch this incredible show). In one episode entitled “20 Hours in America,” three White House staffers get stuck in middle-of-nowhere Iowa and have to find their way back to Washington. I finally understood the incredible frustration and despair of these staffers when I was stuck in the tiny Allentown airport.
My original flight was scheduled for 8:15am on Sunday, January 4. Classes started Monday, so flying in early Sunday would give me the perfect amount of time to settle in and unpack before getting back to the grind. However, a dense fog straight out of a classic horror movie descended on my hometown in Pennsylvania, resulting in zero visibility. The flight was cancelled and I joined a seemingly endless line of fellow grumpy passengers to book a new flight. Fast forward to 2:30pm and I am two minutes from boarding a new flight to Charlotte, where I will catch a connection to Nashville and be back at my dorm sweet dorm by 9pm. At the last minute, the Charlotte flight was cancelled along with every remaining flight leaving Allentown. With all the flights out of Philadelphia booked solid or cancelled, I was spending an extra night in PA.
I finally landed in Nashville on Monday morning after dealing with the Airline That Shall Not Be Named, two cancelled flights, three sets of goodbyes to my parents, and 20 extra hours in Bethlehem. A word to the wise, when coming from farther away (especially if you’re from up North), plan to come back a little earlier to account for tricky flights. The craziness of my trip back to Nashville was one of the few instances when I wish I had gone to a school closer to home, but the moment I stepped foot on campus again and all the little regrets flew away.
A huge shout out to my incredible parents who traversed back and forth from the airport along with my fluctuating flights and dealt with my crankiness. I love you to Vandy and back!