So, in lieu of the inevitable post about Rome or my grand finale on the semester, I finally made it home. Only ten hours after I was supposed to but, hey, at least I made it.

My flight from Rome got in on time, although we had a wicked hard landing. We basically fell out of the sky onto the runway because the wind was devastatingly strong. A couple of the oxygen masks fell down into the cabin (yes, they do exist) and some Italians began shouting, so it wasn’t a pretty scene. After claiming my luggage, I walked out of Terminal One at JFK into a torrential downpour with near-horizontal rain as the wind was blowing the rain in every direction. Needless to say, I was happy to be back in the United States.

I made my way to the Jet Blue terminal only to realize… that my flight scheduled for 10:15 had now been delayed until 1:15am. Great. After checking in and waiting for twenty minutes to check my luggage (and getting lectured on how to travel by myself by the ticket agent: “okay. So walk upstairs. Make a right. See your gate on the ticket? Follow the signs for the corresponding gate. Go through security. You will need an ID and your boarding pass. Don’t lose any of those. They are important. Once you are through security, find your gate. Blah blah. I wanted to deck him, but his nice little blue Santa hat [for Jet Blue, clearly] would ensure my ascent to the non-existent Jewish hell), I looked around for a place to eat. I settled for a Sports Bar and ordered a salad and a burger and a beer. Oh wait – I’m not 21. Whoops. I got carded and felt like such an idiot. I waited in the restaurant for two and a half hours, talking with friends on the semi-manageable free Wifi before heading out and reading a bit. By that point, my flight had been delayed to 1:55am, and eventually 1:56. I slept a little until about midnight when I walked over to the monitor to discover another delay: 2:51am.

After kicking myself for coming home from abroad right during the middle of the holiday travel season and flying through JFK and flying on Jet Blue, I glanced up again to see: Jet Blue #1057 Pittsburgh: Canceled. I ran to the customer service line to get re-booked when they tell me they are providing a bus for us. I thought, oh how nice, a bus to the hotel. No. A bus from JFK to Pittsburgh Int’l Airport. A mere seven hours away. I was clearly delusional as I traipsed down to claim my bags (which took another thirty minutes) and eventually followed other people with PIT luggage tags to the other side of the Departures terminal. This was at 1am. The buses didn’t arrive until 2:30. We didn’t leave for another fifteen minutes and arrived in Pittsburgh at 9:45am, passing my house and my town along the way, with my dad driving a few cars behind our buses.

For most of the night, I was trying to be optimistic about it. Oh, it’s the weather both in New York and in Pittsburgh. Oh, the plane isn’t here yet. Oh, it’s Christmas. But by the end of the night, I nearly lost all respect for Jet Blue since it was clear they didn’t have their act together. It took over two hours once they canceled the flight until they got us buses, there weren’t nearly enough pillows or blankets, the bus drivers didn’t know where the airport was, the sassy ladies at baggage claim shrugged us off AND all other airlines canceled similar flights earlier in the day. If Jet Blue had just canceled the flight during the evening, it would have given us more opportunities to figure out alternatives.

It turns out all the flights the next day on Jet Blue were booked so going standby, on Christmas Eve, out of JFK, on Jet Blue, didn’t seem like the most plausible option. So I took the bus, sucked it up, and slept a little, whilst this guy tried talking to me about how awesome the full moon was or how good cashews tasted after you heated them up in the microwave. Welcome back to America.