Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Three strikes & you're ... blessed

We’re back in Majuro (Marshall Islands)! I thought surely I’d be able to blog a lot on our vacation but I was only able to post one entry during our month-long holiday. I wrote about our flight to Manila and now I’m writing about our trip back.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to pack light. I remember when Raine and I first traveled to MI we had two big suitcases and 1 balikbayan box and to think I’d already removed several clothes to lighten the load. This time I only repacked our 1 big suitcase twice, leaving behind a significant amount of clothes, mostly mine. The luggage weighed in at 49 lbs. (the limit was 50 lbs. for Continental Airlines). I’d hoped for at least 45 lbs. just in case our weighing scale was a bit off from the airport’s. Dad helped me with our luggage as I pushed Raine in her stroller. The person-in-charge of the scale was nowhere to be found so the airport employee just waved us thru to the check-in counters! Whew, I should’ve just added in my other clothes. Lucky strike 1!

As the Continental personnel checked my ticket she pointed out that our flight was at 11:20 a.m. that morning, not at 10:55 p.m. as I thought! Horror of horrors! How could I have been so stupid as to miss that??!! I had checked online earlier that day and I thought to myself the flight was a little delayed because the 10:55 had changed to 11:20. I didn’t realize that the other was a.m. while the other was p.m.! I was panicking inwardly but the personnel seemed calm and thought I could still get in the 10:55 flight that night. Thankfully, the flight to Guam (the first stop) wasn’t full. We were even told that instead of the 4 island stops we’d be making, there would only be three! Lucky strike 2!

I said my goodbyes to my Dad and after the requisite trip to the restroom to check Raine’s diaper, we headed for our gate. I saw Obet, our former seatmate on our trip from Majuro last month, he was taking the same flight too. What a coincidence, a familiar face. I had just a few pesos left on my prepaid number and texted friends, Hazel and Janis, a hasty farewell. We boarded the plane and it turns out that Obet was our seatmate again! I told him about my big booboo and he said I should actually feel fortunate because the 11:20 a.m. flight to Guam actually has a very long waiting period for the Majuro flight. The departure of the connecting flight was early morning of the next day! Airport rules don’t allow passengers to wait at the airport longer than 8 hours so Raine and I would have had to check into a hotel to await our flight the next day! I couldn’t believe it! Lucky Strike 3!

What I thought was going to be a flight of blunders turned out to be a blessing in the sky. ;-) Haha!

4 comments:

julliefer said...

hi rhea! got u linked finally. :)

Renz said...

hi!

dropping by lang!

hope you had fun on your vacation!

Pat said...

hi rhea, ang swerte mo! : )

i've a tag for u here http://shopaholictiestheknot.blogspot.com/2008/05/10-random-things-about-me.html

Coriander Dreams said...

Hi Rhea

:) What an amazing story!

When ur not busy, I've tagged you here... http://www.corianderdreams.com/2008/05/peculiar-friday-tag.html

Cheers
Marie