First Post! Comin’ in Hot!:Tropical Storms and Medical School..Oh My!

Alright dudes and gentle women, this is my first attempt at this thing called blogging. So if I’m doing something totally wrong or oafish… Y’all please tell me.

Ok, so this blog is my attempt at keeping everyone abreast on my adventure through a Caribbean med school. I will not go into my background and what led me to this point in this post. But maybe sometime later. (As that story encompasses far too much information for me to diligently compose onto this lovely webpage right now). So, like I said, I am on the brink of stepping into the newest chapter of my life-Medical School at The American University of the Caribbean in St. Maarten.

Today was supposed to be moving day. I say “supposed to” because due to tropical storm Erika swirling around in the Caribbean…I am now grounded in Atlanta. And have been, since about 8am this morning. After getting up super early(0400), on little to no sleep because it takes time to pack your entire life away, we arrived at the airport in Charleston to fly to SXM. No one batted an eye at the delta counter when we checked in or when we reminded them of the tropical storm that was heading directly to our destination. So we get on the flight with no issues and land in Atlanta only to find out our next flight was cancelled. My parents and I head up to the delta sky club to see what we can figure out. The short story here is that we found a solution, but it wasn’t pretty. We were to turn around and go home to Charleston at noon. Mom and I would leave Saturday evening for JFK airport, and sleep at the airport or a hotel if we could find one and fly out to SXM on Sunday morning with mom returning the same way she came on Monday-overnight in JFK included. Dad would fly back to Raleigh on Sunday, missing everything. Not to mention tracking down the 4 pieces of luggage I checked. All this was such a nasty alternative to a simple rebooking we could’ve done the day before had delta not tried to play off the whole storm issue in the first place. Defeated, we accepted this offer because it was our only option. This process takes a little over an hour.

At this point, we have to try and cancel/modify car rentals and hotels and desperately try to find hotels near JFK for the trip. And I must get a hold of the school officials to tell of my updated itinerary as well as a local hotel we were booked at. This is no easy feat when all businesses are closed due to the storm by order of the prime minister. And the baggage, we still had to track down the baggage.

After about 2 hours, we re routed the bags and had our less-than-ideal plan in place. But….dad just wasn’t satisfied  and did his doc Bunke thing and called the delta diamond phone line again. And to our shock, they had added on a flight for tomorrow (Friday August 28) and there were a handful of open seats. BOOM! On it, like a chicken on a June-bug. But what about today?! Well we decided that it was just easier to stay here in Atlanta for the night. So here we are. In one way or another. Thanks to what I continue to call #sistURRICANE because my sister’s name is Erica…not spelled the same though.

So we will try this international thing again tomorrow. And I will post once more when I arrive with details about this crazy awesome adventure called Medical School.

Enjoy the contrast of the two pictures I hope I posted here.