Hello from JFK (AKA Hell)

Hello and welcome back to the Mina Diaries!

I am finally going on another adventure! And this time, adventure is actually a bit of an understatement. Today I left my house at 6:30AM to catch my first flight (of four today). Right now I am en route to visit a very good friend in York, England. I'll stay there for about 5 days before heading over to Prague, Czech Republic to house sit for another good friend. I'll be there for another 2 1/2 months or so before moving to Osaka Prefecture, Japan until December for a study abroad.

Today is my first day of traveling. It started off with a bang when the security stations at KCI were closed because the fire alarm went off. That was a fun experience. When I finally got on my plane, the captain came on to inform us that one of the air conditioner units on the plane was broken and someone was coming to look. They decided we would just fly without it (since everyone was on the plane already) and just fly lower because the cabin wouldn't be fully pressurized due to the air duct breaking. then there was another wait for a fuel truck to be brought out to insure that there was enough for the extra gas it would take to get to DC. We finally landed....and got to walk on the tarmac to the terminal because apparently there were no gates for us.

We land on time, amazingly, and I join a group of people from the flight running madly to catch our connector to NYC. We landed in terminal A and had to hop a terminal connector to terminal C, running to our gate at the far end of the terminal. On this flight there was a last minute maintenance check that left us all sitting on the tarmac an additional few minutes, making me regret having run all the way from the other side of the airport. Oh yeah, and we weren't at a gate again, so we boarded from the tarmac. I found out during this flight that United Airlines doesn't give free snacks like Southwest or Delta. I never thought I would hate an airline more than Delta, but I think United has claimed that spot. At least Delta has those yummy cookies.

When we landed at Hell JFK, we were escorted onto the tarmac again and into the terminal. Gates? What are those? At this point, I was officially done with my US airlines flights, so I had to go pull my bags out of baggage claim and go recheck them with Iceland Air. This is where things start to go wrong. For some reason, even thought I wrote down my flight time last night, both my mother and I got it in our heads that my flight was at 5:00 something. I tried to recheck my bags, but it turns out that my flight isn't until 8:00 something. This brings us to where I'm at now, sitting in JFK, my least favourite place in the entire world, for 8 hours. I can't even go through the gate to get decent food for another 4 hours or so. I would go out and see New York except I 1) have a ton of baggage, and 2) I hate NYC anyways.

After I finally get going, I'll have one more layover in Reykjavik, Iceland before landing in London, England. Not only will I get to see Heathrow but also King's Cross Station! I am super excited!