India is now behind me, for the third time. But I'm not home yet! I'm currently sitting in Dubai looking at a lovely view of the Burj Khalifa and a golf course - used as part of an ad for the Hotel InterContinental, mounted on the wall in the airport above the moving walkway, just across from my Naugahyde lounge chair.
But that was then... as I typed that I was summoned to the desk where new boarding passes were being printed for all 27 of us. That process complete, now a nice woman is checking into the unlikely possibility of getting us hotel rooms for the night. Yesterday an Emirates flight from India had an emergency landing here at the Dubai airport and then exploded after everyone safely evacuated. That stopped all traffic for a number of hours, and now the airport is open again but with only one runway. Emirates chose to fly us in here in spite of the delays, probably because they needed our plane to move other people out. Our 4:30 am flight was postponed until 7:00 and actually departed around 8:00. In spite of promises offered by the Emirates staff in Bangalore, we landed when the gate to our connecting flight was already closed and missed our connection to O'Hare.
My colleague Tia spent the next 5 hours in near-Hell conditions at the transfer counter working her butt off to get us booked on new flight(s), while my colleague Karleigh hung near a different awful transfer counter in case they could serve us more quickly. Meanwhile, the students and I hung out in the mall-like terminal where I enjoyed a free sandwich and charged my phone. In the end, we were booked as a group on tomorrow's flight to O'Hare.
But that was then... we indeed did get hotel rooms, courtesy of the airline which gave out well over 3000 hotel rooms today. The woman who printed our boarding passes was a reluctant helper at first, as we were apparently keeping her from her work with another flight. But by the time she printed them her attitude changed. She personally walked us down the concourse to the ticketing gate to the chaotic connections counter and proceeded to work with her colleagues to process hotel-related visa sponsorship. After that mess, where I observed passports all over the place, among people working while people of all nationalities tried to push through the open door, she emerged victorious, full of smiles, and so excited to have helped us that she went around and gave half of us hugs before taking her leave. We somehow found our way downstairs, through security, and out through the amazing terminal that sits under the tarmac and resembles a beautiful old train station and a casino. Soon we boarded a bus with little fold-down extra seats, exactly like the one we had while touring Ghana in 2008, except with cloth seats, not Naugahyde.
Now I am seated having instant coffee with Tia and Karleigh on a Naugahyde(?) couch in the lobby of the Palm Dubai Hotel, waiting for them to scan 27 passports. We will have dinner in about 15 minutes. We landed in Dubai 10 hours and 10 minutes ago, so it has been a long day.
That was then... now I'm struggling to keep my eyes open in my room while a Tom & Jerry cartoon plays on TV and I wait for a power adapter to be delivered to my room. I called more than half an hour ago. Called again just now and had a hard time reaching anyone. Someone just arrived at my door without one... I was very direct and repetitive explaining what I needed half an hour ago. He immediately came back with the adapter. Now I must go to sleep. Tomorrow I'll have to write more about the room, the dinner, and the collection of sketchy clubs on the Mezzanine.
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