Traveling, by Katie Rebeil

I never realized how many problems one can encounter when traveling. When you travel in the United States or travel overseas with your family, it all seems so simple. However, this semester has shown me that everything is not as easy as it seems, or maybe things like this only happen to me. The first trip that was problematic for me was Switzerland. When my friend and I arrived to the airport, we noticed that our flight was delayed 30 minutes. Although it was annoying, we just wanted to make sure that we would land in time to catch our bus from Madrid to Sevilla. Therefore, we asked a flight attendant and she told us that the flight would be shorter than it actually was, but we didn’t know this at the time. When it was time to walk towards the gate, we noticed that boarding was also delayed. To our dismay, no one moved for a long time and we didn’t understand what was going on. Finally, a line began to form. However, it was moving extremely slow and we couldn’t comprehend why. By the time we reached the ticket counter, we realized that they were loading all of the passengers for a flight onto a bus. We were both surprised because we had never experienced anything like this. In awe, we asked the flight attendant what was going on and she told us that the plane wasn’t big enough to fit all of us, so we had to take a bus to a bigger plane. We finally sat down on the bus, but when we looked back, we noticed the line of people that were still waiting to get on a bus. In the end, our flight ended up being delayed two hours. Once we landed, I realized just how late our flight was and I told my friend that we were going to miss our bus. Nonetheless, we ran throughout the Madrid airport to try and make it on time. However, while we were running, my backpack somehow opened and all of my clothes went flying everywhere. I panicked and called out for my friend and she came back and we quickly threw as many clothes as we could back into my bag and we ran carrying the rest of it. Unfortunately, we missed our bus. At this point, we knew we had to look for another bus otherwise; we would be stuck in Madrid for the night. Luckily, there was another bus later that night and we were able to make it back home.