I seriously couldn't make this up

Yeah, um, I think I angered the gods.

After much time packing and preparation and getting every last little detail organized, Park took me to the airport on Thursday, April 19th. My flight was at 4:45pm arriving at 4 in the afternoon in Johannesburg on Friday. I had a hotel reservation and would set out to Malawi Saturday morning. Mmmhmmm.

"Denied Boarding"

Apparently, my passport did not have two COMPLETELY clean pages available for entry into South Africa. Now, mind you that I do have 3 clean pages, but those are the wrong type of pages. As I have NOW learned, the last few pages are for amendments........get your microscope and you can see the difference between "visa" pages and "amendment" pages. So, I paid 650 bucks to get an expedited passport in 24 hours so that I could make the Saturday flight. So I pretty much spent all of Thurs and Fri to get all the flight re-bookings done, get the passport, etc. Oh, and all the airlines say it's my fault so they are "waived" the penalty fees THIS time. How kind.

So, anyway, damage done, I got my passport and gpt checked in for the Saturday flight. Delta said it was close to the flight for a seat assignment, but just to get one at the gate. FAMOUS LAST WORDS. I was allowed to get on the plane 5 minutes before departing since someone thankfully didn't show up. Shall I stop there? Nah. How bout I go on to tell about getting 3 hours into the flight before having to turn around and change planes? Ha! It actually was pretty flippin funny when I called Park at midnight from the airport to say hi........he and Sarah were oh so amused. As were all 300 of us waiting in this hallway where they put us between planes.

As if that wasn't enough, when we finally finihsed the 8 hour flight to Dakar (scheduled stop), which was actually 15 hours into this little adventure, the pilot landed us so hard (now I know how a water balloon feels) we had to sit in Dakar for 2 hours while they changed the tire! There's more that followed my 26 hour flight time - arriving in JNB at 1:30 in the morn (murder capital of the world), 2 hrs sleep before Malawi flight, 7 hour layover - but it would just start sounding pathetic to go on, and I've really hit the high points!

I'm here and I don't think I'm gonna risk trying to come back. Please forward my mail.