(For everyone who got the email, this is identical. There are some people who read the blog and aren't on my email list. All future updates will happen on the blog.)
*Cue yellow scrolling text*
Hello from Sint Maarten (the Dutch spell it that way, because… they're Dutch, I guess)! It has been an interesting trip thus far, and we're just finishing up day two on this incredibly humid paradise. I thought I'd let everyone know how the trip went, and then I'm going to crawl into bed and bask in the warm glow of the internet that I spilled so much blood for. Well, I just kinda sat at the table.
But I get ahead of myself!
Our story begins in Lancaster, at 3:00 am. It is very early, and Jes gets out of bed to finish getting our last suitcase packed. I bravely stay in bed for another half hour.
Dad drove us to LAX just after 4:00, and we made it sometime after 5:15ish? It was early. My mind was groggy.
We tried to check in using the helpful kiosks, and they were not helpful. Not at all. So we got in line to speak with one of the two representatives helping all 480 million people trying to fly American Airlines, and surprisingly quickly we got our tickets, checked 4 bags, a stroller, a car seat for Autry, and the pack-n-play. Dad, the chivalric gentleman that he is, took us to security, but had to leave us there, even though the lady that helped us was SUPER nice and gave him a ticket that would've let him come to the gate with us. He said he had to “work”.
Psh.
Autry was very happy to see the people around us, and gleefully ran to the bookstore to peruse (remove forcefully) everything on the bottom shelf she could get her hands on. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:30, and at about 8:00 they told us that the flight was booked solid, and if we wanted to check any bags, we could do so for free. Jes happily took our two carry on bags for them to schlep. They then announced that our plane wasn’t there (or something), and they'd have to pull one out of the hangar. Then they changed our gate. It wasn't very far away, but it was cutting it kind of close, and I worried a little about all the luggage making it, but I had faith.
We ended up leaving a little late, and by that I mean about an hour late. It was a 6 hour flight, and Autry only napped for about 40 minutes somewhere in the middle. Without going into too much detail, it was a pretty hellish flight, but Autry was quiet and manageable for probably about half of it. We had a two hour layover, so I wasn't super worried about it. Then we couldn't fly straight into Miami as originally planned, we instead flew past Miami, and came up at it from the south to avoid some inclement weather. We were down to about 40 minutes to make our connection. Jes and I (again) worried about our bags, but I held fast hope.
We landed successfully, and I've got to give American credit, they hire some pretty incredible pilots. I didn't even feel the tires hit. We taxied for a few minutes, and then the pilot told us to look at all the incredible lightning strikes outside the windows.
I thought to myself, “That was an interesting thing for him to say.”
He followed it up with, “And because of that lightning, no one can leave, so there's a plane at our gate.”
So we sat for about 30 minutes, looking at our gate.
They let us off at about 6:50, and our flight for Saint Martin was supposed to leave at 7:00. We had to ride the skytrain monorail thing over to a different terminal, sprinted with the baby in hand (as well as the diaper bag, purse, and backpack containing our laptops etch), and made it just in time for them to re-open the gate and let us on. We were incredibly tired by this point, and neither of us had anything to eat on the flight from Miami (apparently complimentary peanuts would've been too much for the 6 hour flight).
And we sat at the gate for about 20 minutes. So we didn't have to sprint, and it kindled the slightest of hopes that our luggage would be able to make it. Once we taxied out, we had to wait in line, since they had stopped all outgoing flights during the lightning storm. We were (I think) 23rd in line, or something like that.
So right as we take off, Jes lets our ride (two women whose husbands work/are students here) know that we're probably going to be late.
And we were.
We arrived, and instantly began exuding copious amounts of fluids from our bodies at about 11:30 pm (instead of 9:55).
We were the last plane to arrive, shockingly enough, and the customs people really wanted to be home. They didn't ask what we were doing here, how long we were staying, anything at all. The 60 or so people from our flight eagerly collected their luggage, and disappeared into the night. Jes, Autry and I, along with one other family stared sadly at the luggage circling the carousel.
None of our luggage made it. No pack n play, no baby seat, no stroller, no bag full of diapers, no changes of clothes.
Jes had very cleverly packed our carry ons to have everything we'd need in case we lost our luggage. But they lost our gate-checked carry ons too.
To add insult to injury, there was no one at the lost luggage counter. I asked one of the customs officials and she told me that the agent had to (something something something something in a loose Caribbean type accent) then would be there after that.
She literally could've said that he needed to cure cancer first, and I wouldn't have had any idea.
Turns out, it took him so long because someone on our flight had had a stroke, and another woman was too inebriated to walk, so they had to get an ambulance and someone to drive the lady to her hotel.
But, after describing our 9 missing pieces of luggage, we walked to the car of the very patient girl who was picking us up. She's super friendly, has two kids, so she had a car seat to put Autry into on our way back. About 2 minutes into the drive, her car died.
So at 12:30 am, day two of our Caribbean adventure, we were in a powerless car next to the airport. The girl, who I will now refer to as Natalie, since that's her name, called the other lady (who had left about an hour earlier since we didn't have 9 pieces of luggage), and we got our car jumped and we made it to our apartment. It's pretty nice, and we're very happy with it. I'll put some pictures on the blog some time this week.
Today another one of the ladies (we'll call her Alicia, since again, her name) took us to burger king for some breakfast. The croissant sandwich was $7.00, and they didn't take cards. Between the 3 of us, we had 10 euro, 6 dollars in ones, and a $100 bill. Thankfully I noticed that it was the MEAL that cost $7.00, and the sandwich itself only cost like $2.85. Apparently coke syrup is worth more than gold here.
Jes’ sponsor in the Spouses organization took her to the Costco equivalent to load up on all the things we'll need. They list all the prices in Netherlands Antilles guilders as well as US dollars. When Jes got the total, it was like $680. Which was pretty shocking. But that was guilders! It's 1.8 guilders per dollar, so it was far more reasonable for the amount of stuff Jes got.
Our luggage got here at about 5:00, and after jumping Natalie’s car again (she should probably get that looked at), we got back with all our suitcases. Which was good, since we were on Autry’s last diaper.
Jes also got a router, and internet was already available (in the sense that we have to pay for it regardless), so that's why I got to email everyone!
I kinda skipped over most of today, but in essence I was sitting at home sweating while Jes ran around with the people from the Spouse’s organization doing errands. Autry is (shocker) nonplussed by the heat, but it's a little sad to see her be so sweaty all the time.
It's pretty late now (ok it's only 10:30, but we've had some late nights), so I'm going to head to bed.
I’m trying to figure out Google voice for phone calls and all that jazz, but so far I've managed to get WhatsApp installed (it's a free (for a year) international text app, so it works a lot like iMessage, but you can use it to message non apple phones too), Jes has Facebook messenger, and we can facetime if we're in our apartment as well.
We love you and miss you all so much!
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