I had turned my cell phone off to conserve battery, and when I turned it on at 3:30 this morning, I discovered that my flight had been canceled. This was, of course, no great surprise, but I am a little sorry that I didn't get the voice mail at 10:00 last night! Anyway, we had purchased my tickets (international and domestic) separately because of how we were using frequent flyer points, so my flight from For Lauderdale to Port Au Prince was not automatically rescheduled. Ben called American Airlines and spoke to a representative who used a very sympathetic tone of voice when she informed us that it would be almost three hundred dollars to change the ticket. Ben hung up the phone and briefly considered driving me to Florida, but I was not keen on arriving in Haiti a day ahead of the rest of the team! I suggested we sleep on it, and we could re-visit the situation when the kids woke us up at six. Biggest reason: I didn't want to pay the money, change the ticket, and then not be able to use that one either. What if the Huntsville airport wasn't able to re-open?
Sure enough, six rolled around and three children - very surprised to see me - climbed in the bed to talk about their day. By then WDRM was reporting that the airport was open, so I felt comfortable changing the ticket. Ben called, got a completely different agent who was Genuinely sympathetic, (and had seen the news, and had rightly guessed the nature of my trip), and changed my flight without charging me a cent. Woot, woot!
It still seems crazy to go flying out when most of alabama is in a state of emergency, but it doesn't seem as scary by the light of day as it did in the (unbelievable) darkness of last night. Kate (praise God) woke up fever-free so I feel much better leaving her, and now the kids get to take me to the airport. My heart goes out to all those affected by last night's storms.
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